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Exchanges on Mother Tongue as tool for teaching basic grades

 

E. Ablorh-Odjidja

September 08, 2014

 

Publisher's note:  Background conversations, starting with this message from a reader: "Yours is the most ill-informed piece I have seen lately on issues mother tongue. Please familiarize yourself with the trend in this area. The Chinese are not about to drop their mother tongue; they aren't that silly; to the contrary one reason that they are cruising ahead at dizzying speed is the very use of mother tongue in school and everywhere except when they have to deal with the rest of the world. Use of foreign language at formative stages only renders learners strangers to the subjects; few are able to own the ideas."

 

And the letter that prompted the response below: Read letter

 

 

Dear Dr.(PhD)

The logic you refer to here, "since we have too many ethnic languages we better give them all up and adopt a foreign language to unite us" is not mine.

I am not averse to starting a child in a mother tongue. But which one is it going to be in a multi-tongue region? How do we effect comprehension in the chosen language, which may be as much a handicap to the child as the English? And since, ultimately we are coming back to the English anyway, don't you think this exercise will only be a detour?

If this assertion "Some think that the first language is actually stored in a different section of the brain and is never lost easily. I have seen old people forget the learned languages as they got older but never the language they were born with" is true then why the worry? Why can't this hard to forget, hot wired attribute to our brains be the controlling mechanism for what we learn?

You wrote," African toddlers are proud of their mother tongue in their early years and think it's the best language until they are old enough to think it's inferior. Our kids begin seeing that we are backward in relation to other world communities; so they begin associating our languages with inferiority and backwardness; indigenous religions too are shunned. But first language still is the best tool of learning and thinking. Creativity and inventiveness is attained most often and effectively in mother tongue because that's the language that is lodged in the deepest most efficient part of our brains."

The latter part of your statement is already answered by the "controlling mechanism" part of my statement above. The part of your "backward in relation to other world communities" is something I don't relate to. I am a very proud African. I raised my kids as proud Africans too.

I don't know how old you are but I am impressed by your credentials. Because of the area of your specialization, you should be the first to know that language is a viable tool for survival, mastering yours or the occupier's or both. Coming from Kenya and I from Ghana, we should know that the language the people of the island now known as United Kingdom spoke before the Romans was not the same English spoken there today. In other words, languages evolve and some become extinct. England grew and became an empire and soldiers from Kenya and Ghana fought two world wars for her while speaking their individual mother tongues.

It is interesting you bring up this point, you being an Egyptologist, "I learnt the dead languages and scripts of ancient Egypt and I was exposed to the working of the African brain before political and cial, mental colonization by forces from outside burst in. The African of old Egypt adopted Greek, then Arabic as he mixed with the colonisers and his own language was suppressed. As he lost the language it went along with his proven capacity for creativity. This most creative of the human race isn't active now but perhaps going back to mother tongue may take us to where we were before."

The point about ancient Egypt is that she lost her independence before she lost her original language. When the Assyrians, the Greeks and the Romans conquered her, the language she spoke and fought her battles in was the original language. If that language had reflected efficiently the technological advances, the strategies of warfare and the tactics desired to win battles in those times she would have been the victor, kept her language intact and therefore her independence. Some centuries later, she was to lose to the Arabs - again!

Your remark about Kenya in the world of sports is interesting:"I come from that part of Kenya where 85% of world beaters in long races hail from. I have spoken to many of them and they tell me that they "use mother tongue" when running. It so appears that they excel here because running does not require a foreign language in order to execute. Now suppose all school subjects were learnt in the first language. I believe this would produce world beaters in other areas too from here and elsewhere in Africa."

Well, what else is required for successful marathoners like the Kenyans? I like their dominance. It makes me proud of Africa. But realize these athletes are running in Adidas or some other foreign made footings. And please don't exclude the foreign earning incentives. They are best known to run in Western countries and stadia outside Africa. The benefits of immersing themselves in the foreign arena translate instantly to Kenya’s pride and economy. And they do all this without losing their identity. I am certain that using English as a tool to empower us will not harm us.

I never said we should abandon our African languages for a foreign one in the interest of unity. If Kiswahili is taught in your region, it is because many understand it as first language in a large area. I am all for that exercise so long as tribal pride is not impinged upon, a minority group is not suffering from inferiority complex and, presumably, the effort empowers all of us and not a few.

That said I want to publish this piece on Ghanadot. If you want your full statements and your name to be disclosed please say so. I will also include as reference the link you provided.

As editorial policy, we do not publish one-liner commentaries or statements..

Cheers,

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publsiher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, September 08, 2014.

Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited. If posted at a website, email a copy of the web page to publisher@ghanadot.com . Or don't publish at all.

 

Related articles:

When political correctness is sold as mother tongue for education reforms

 

Reference material sent by the reader:  https://www.globalpartnership.org/sites/default/files/2013-07-SIL-International-Presentation-MLE-In-Cameroon_processed_0.pdf

 

 

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