Botswana: Mother Tongue in Education

Posted by sociolingo on February 5, 2008

Source: AllAfrica.com via Terry Howcott

Mother Tongue in Education

Mmegi/The Reporter (Gaborone)
OPINION
3 July 2007
Posted to the web 4 July 2007

By Dorcas Moefhe, Owen Pansiri and Sheldon Weeks
Gaborone
It is now a known and accepted fact that the use of mother tongue as a medium of instruction in early days of schooling contributes to improved classroom learning and related academic achievement.

Children who learn to read and write on their first language or mother tongue then transfer those skills to other languages such as Setswana and English. What is more problematic is how to start with mother tongue education in a multilingual society such as Botswana. Collaboration between governments and non-governmental organisations in educational development is one major strategy that the World Conferences on Education of 1990 and 2000 endorsed.

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Botswana has used this strategy to deal with, among others, the education of remote area dwellers. The government has also embraced the Minority Education Project with a specific focus on the education of the San, but the project does not seem to be coming out clearly between the Ministry of Education and the other interested parties. The University of Botswana and the University of Tromso (UB/UT) are currently working together on research and capacity building for the Basarwa whom they refer to as the San.

Through this initiative, various research activities and consultancies have been conducted to explore the educational needs of the San. This project has extended collaboration beyond academia.

It has drawn in stakeholders such as the Ministry of Education, UNESCO and other partners such as Letloa Trust Board of Trustees of the Kuru Family of Organisations and the business communities, especially De Beers and Debswana and other regional and far-flung organisations that have shown an interest in inclusive education and the education of children in marginalised communities. Informed by research and consultancies, all those who are involved in the Minority Education Project have understood the wider historical context of the San as an educationally marginalised segment of the Botswana society.

The project engaged with the idea of trying to achieve inclusive education so that the San children have equal and easier opportunity to participate in the cycle of 10 years of basic education as envisaged by the Revised National Policy on Education of 1994. Through a series of consultations, the issue of Mother Tongue Pilot Schools emerged and the Letloa Trust took it further for support with various interested parties, particularly De Beers and Debswana and then the Ministry of Education.

Along the way it appeared that the Minority Education Project was not clearly conceptualised by the parties involved, that is, the Ministry of Education and De Beers and Debswana.

Some people were neither comfortable with the term “minority education project” nor its focus on a specific ethnic group. To make the project friendlier to all stakeholders, efforts were made to redefine its objectives and refocus, hence the emergence of the “Support Programme for Education in Remote Areas” (SPERA).

SPERA was inclusive of other groups living in remote areas, but maintained its focus on the educational needs of the San. While these agencies were willing to support the project, some issues such as focus, management capacity and sustainability were raised by the government, which seemed to want a project that was not for a specific or particular ethnic group.

In the long run, after a number of years of planning, formulation of documents and other activities, the proposed SPERA pilot project has not taken off. The Support Programme for Education in Remote Areas needs to be pursued further as a pilot project on inclusive education.

This would be a step towards the implementation of the policy recommendation on teaching through children’s first language or mother tongue that has been pending since 1994.

The project should be viewed as an opportunity on which the education sector and its partners can inform themselves on the best practices in developing mother-tongue language education programmes for the various non-Setswana speakers in Botswana. The already existing partnership between the University of Botswana and the University of Tromso, the Ministry of Education, Debswana, Letloa Board of Trustees and other interested agencies such as UNESCO, provides a positive climate upon which the SPERA project cannot be allowed to fail, provided all is done to ‘educationalise’, but not to ‘politicise’ the project.

Namibia: Mother Tongue Project Distributes Thousands of Books

Posted by sociolingo on February 5, 2008

Source: New Era via Terry Howcott

Mother Tongue Project Distributes Thousands of Books
By Wezi Tjaronda
WINDHOEK

Some 750 000 teaching and learning textbooks from Grades 1 to 3 have been distributed to schools since the start of the Basic Education Programme (BEP) Upgrading African Languages Project (Afrila) in October 2000, which has improved the textbook learner ratio.

The project aimed at improving literacy and numeracy in learners in the mother tongue and also to promote the acquisition of English as a second language before English becomes the medium of instruction from Grade 4 onwards.

It is believed that the language spoken at home by a learner is an important prerequisite to success in learning. The project has developed new teaching and learning materials in six target languages, namely, Kukwangali, Rumanyo, Thimbukushu, Otjiherero, Silozi and Khoekhoegowab, but also in Oshindonga and Oshikwanyama for grades 1 to 3.

Last month, the Afrila project launched literacy, mathematics and environmental studies textbooks for grades 1 to 3 in six target languages. The textbooks are based on the revised lower primary curriculum and the new subject syllabus, to contribute to the strengthening of mother tongue education in the foundation phase.

Launching the books, Undersecretary for Formal Education in the Ministry of Education, Alfred Ilukena, said language was the most important tool for thinking, a means of communication and one of the most important aspects of identity.

“A high level of communication in one’s language is a prerequisite in a knowledge-based society,” he said.
Ilukena said learners also learnt best through their mother tongues in the formative years of schooling and would master English if they have mastered their mother tongue first.

“The purpose of the lower primary phase is to lay a foundation for learning throughout the formal education system. If the foundation which is laid in these four years is good, the learners will be well prepared to continue learning,” he said, adding that this would also enable children to develop self-confidence and self-worth through personal and social development during this phase.

The Afrila project coordinator, Andreas Schott, who also bade farewell since the project has come to an end, said the project supported the ministry and NIED to implement the Language Policy for Schools to improve the quality of mother tongue education in the lower primary phase.

The project has made available over 350 publications.

“This in itself should alone increase the effectiveness of teaching in the lower primary classroom combined with a learner-centred pedagogy in which the textbooks are the basis as the guiding pedagogical paradigm,” said Schott.
However, he recommended that an impact study be conducted to determine how the materials have improved the performance of the learners and also that the ministry should incorporate necessary activities for mother tongue education in the lower primary phase into ETSIP planning through a second language policy and a feasible textbook policy.

The project was financed by the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ).

Uganda: support for Ugandan languages

Uganda’s state minister for Gender, Isanga Nakadama has advised parents to stop forcing their children to speak English.

By Risdel KasasiraThe minister who was presiding over the World Cultural Day in Kampala, says for African cultures to survive, native languages must be protected especially at family level. She says there are families where children are beaten because they speak native languages.Nakadama says this is an unfortunate situation that will kill African languages. Nakadama said Ugandan government is planning to introduce teaching of vernaculars from primary to secondary level in order to help maintain local languages in every locality.The minister of relief and disaster preparedness, Prof. Tarsis Kabwegyere proposed that the Institute of Languages at Makerere University, Uganda’s leading public university to work with the ministry of gender, labour and social development to design a national language policy.

Kabwegyere says the policy should be written in all native languages of Uganda.

Ultimate Media

Ghana: Textbooks

LETTER TO THE SPEAKER

Towards a needs-based curriculum for schools

Mr. Speaker, Honorable majority members, Honorable members of the minority, ladies and gentlemen.
In my letter to you some months ago, I discussed programmatic structures with regards to the curriculum in our universities, in which I indicated that the current curriculum succeeds in producing students en masse at the end of each academic year, but fails to make them productive in society. Even though the greater majority of my audience understood the import of my argument and agreed with me, in principle, on the challenging issues I raised, others misread the piece and thought I meant that some courses in the liberal arts such as History and Philosophy, among others are irrelevant and should not be offered. I don’t think I can ever dream of such an idea, having gone through the same system and programs, myself. In that piece, I argued that the current set up of programs, among which are those in the liberal arts, have not been designed and taught with any connection to the outside world, thus products of the universities become displaced in the communities in which they have to serve because they find it difficult if not impossible to apply such knowledge in the real world. It has been seven (7) months since this piece and I am yet to hear a single reform about that.
We seem to be losing hold of a number of things, one of which includes our English language. We can hardly talk of a language policy which identifies us as real Ghanaians. I am not talking about whether or not we should have a national language, but a national English language policy that can identify us as Ghanaians and can identify us with one bloc of the so-called powerful Western countries. Today, when experts talk about the Englishes of the world Nigeria is mentioned. Nigeria has become such a powerful bloc identifiable with a consistent, marked way of speaking and writing that is uniquely Nigerian. There is no such thing as Ghanaian English even though I can easily make out a Ghanaian from a Nigerian should they both present themselves. Usually, for a developing country, the success of language policy might be contingent on how well its system is modeled after its colonial powers. Thus, one would easily assume that the Ghanaian will take after the British both in speech and in writing. Unfortunately, however, we seem to be at a cross-road in this direction as one is not sure if our speech and written forms are American or British. When the Ghanaian speaks or writes, it is very difficult to decipher its form and function as it is not clear if it follows the American or the British tradition. This is worrying, considering that even in schools the problem has crept into the syllabi and most instructors have no clue what this is doing to our identity or even if there is some awareness, instructors do not care. What is obvious now is that Ghanaians are now like the metaphoric pendulum moving to and fro at the touch of any harmless weapon.
This chaotic situation on the language scene is reflected in curriculum development at the basic and secondary levels of education. I don’t know if I am the only one who has observed this phenomenon but over the past years there have been attempts by curriculum designers to introduce some Western (American or British) subject matters into the syllabi of students in the educational sector and this hasn’t helped. Isn’t it a source of concern that children as early as the crèche level are made to study subject matters that have no bearing on their cultural contexts? Consider a child who lives in the Kushiegu-Karaga area, who is forced to study subject matters about hurricanes, history of other countries, animals, and concepts that are so foreign to pupils. The process of education at the tender age at which these pupils find themselves is so complex and until the pupils are able to have some grounding in their environment, they can’t make any sense of other materials that are so foreign to them. At the basic level, pupils wherever they find themselves know as much terminologies of their environments and will take sometime for them to be exposed to foreign phenomena. How would they make sense of hurricanes and holocaust when they don’t ever happen in Ghana?
The Literature scene has been invaded by foreign texts and materials, many of which students have no clue what the texts are talking about. The worrying development is that for the most part texts from the western orientation have been favored over the texts and materials that deal with the Ghanaian or African experiences and whose themes provoke crucial debates and arguments. What this means is that students know more about foreign subjects than they know about their local heroes and writers, and how can they relate to their history with this growing sense of displacement? As it stands our education is not geared towards producing graduates who will meet the challenges of the nation, but graduates who will serve the needs of the West. By the time a student leaves school he can recite and quote notable areas of Shakespeare’s or Arthur Miller’s texts but display sheer ignorance about the culture and history of Ghana or Africa, or in other words his/she will hardly be able to display knowledge of Ghanaian texts.
I am by no means discounting the importance of materials of the Shakespearean or western tradition but our dependence on them has not done our students any good. I will admit that Literatures of the western tradition or specifically those of the Shakespearean orientation are one of the best considering the universal nature of their themes but how can you treat such foreign subjects in schools when students can make no connections with the concepts discussed in the materials? Pupils and students can only benefit if they are not rushed into studying the Literatures of other areas they are yet to encounter. Our educational authorities can only hasten slowly in introducing these materials to our pupils and students. At the university level a careful blend of Ghanaian or African texts and those from the West and not necessarily an over-dependence on western texts and materials will help.
We seem to be at a cross-road, only feeding on systems that have not helped us. We need a curriculum that can identify with the needs and ideals of our system. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Author: Godwin Yaw Agboka