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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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