A much more flexible and open teaching and language policy would help teachers and pupils to enable a meaningful learning environment in a multilingual and diverse classroom setting.
It’s hailed as one of the greatest works of fiction to emerge from Africa. But Things Fall Apart was written in English, sparking debate about the colonisation of language.
Over the years, our understanding of how language and learning are linked has shifted and changed. There is ample evidence about the value of mother-tongue-based multilingual education.
Universities pay too little attention to the knowledge and experiences that students bring to their institutions from different cultures and backgrounds.
In Africa, standard English dominates in formal institutions. But in everyday usage it is supplanted by the continent’s abundance of languages – and the varieties of English these gave rise to.
Those who don’t want Stellenbosch University to make English the main language of instruction have invoked South Africa’s Constitution - but the assumptions underlying their arguments are false.
Traditional African stories often tackle big, occasionally scary and serious themes. This is even true in children’s stories – though there’s plenty of room for silly fun, too.
There is a new potential coloniser on South Africa’s linguistic block. From 2016, Mandarin will be taught in schools – and this will see African languages bumped even further down the pecking order.
The stories of and attitudes to three particular languages – English, Swahili and Luganda – provide an interesting starting point for a debate around Uganda’s language policy.
Bernie Millar, Cape Peninsula University of Technology
There is little value in translating academic texts into “high” or “deep” versions of African languages. Most students read and speak their mother tongues in a far more colloquial fashion.
It is important that all South Africans learn to speak an African language. But is making a single language a compulsory university subject the best way to make this happen?