Should English be the mother tongue of all South Africans?
The language in education debate was high on the agenda when Minister of Education Kader Asmal addressed the International Literacy Conference in Cape Town last month.
Asmal revealed that a study conducted by the Department of Education in Mpumalanga showed that in five out of 10 districts, the most favoured medium of instruction is English, despite the fact that English is the home language of a minority of learners in the province.
“So we have an enormous task to persuade teachers and parents of the value of the use of African languages as academic languages,” he said.
Making this task more difficult, Asmal said, was the increased number of multilingual classes. “On the one hand this is an indication of the hybridity and richness, but it does make for complicated choices in certain schools.”
Other research commissioned by the Department of Education cites a school in a poor township in Mpumalanga. Although this is not the most urbanised or multilingual province, this school has, in grade one, out of a total of 92 learners: 22 speakers of isiZulu, seven speakers of isiXhosa, 13 speakers of siSwati, four of Xitsonga, 30 of isiNdebele, 14 of Sesotho and two of Tshivenda. “This could become a classroom nightmare, but it is the teachers themselves who somehow find the answers to this complexity. We must find the model teachers, who exist in all contexts – under- resourced and well-resourced schools – and learn from them,” Asmal said.
He added that the same study on diversity in Mpumalanga cites one predominantly Sepedi school, which wasn’t even aware of the language in education policy but which was close to the border with Mozambique and was faced with an influx of Xitsonga pupils.
“It was their own idea, born out of commonsense, to find and employ an extra teacher for the Foundation Phase who could teach in Xitsonga. In many of these schools, the multiplicity of languages spoken does not present itself as a problem. The teachers and pupils have worked out ways to accommodate each other – another tribute to our South Africanness!”
Asmal said his ministry recognised the central role that language and literacy play in learning and teaching, and also that this role must be enhanced dramatically. “We see language as a means of communication and as a badge of identity. We believe it has a key role to play in the task of nation-building, and in generating harmony and reconciliation among our diverse people.”
He said the Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy, which was published earlier this year, strongly endorses the importance of multilingualism, and even recommends that all learners be required to learn an African language.
“We don’t want to force this attractive and logical option on learners, but we want them to come to the understanding that learning the languages of the majority of the people of this country is good for them, and it is good for the country.”
In a briefing to Parliament earlier this year, the Pan South African Language Board said learners would fare better if they were initially taught in their mother tongue and gradually introduced to English.
– The Teacher/M&G Media, Johannesburg, December 2001.