Teaching in vernacular is educationally retrogressive

Mar 20, 2008

The article authored recently by Geraldine Bukenya about the policy on teaching languages for primary school children should not go unchallenged (“Teaching in local languages good policy” in The New Vision Friday March 7, 2008.

BY SANTO ASIIMWE

The article authored recently by Geraldine Bukenya about the policy on teaching languages for primary school children should not go unchallenged (“Teaching in local languages good policy” in The New Vision Friday March 7, 2008.

The question she did not answer is how the policy will help its consumers to function on the international scene, while they cannot communicate among themselves in the same country.

Language is a medium through which people’s true cultural identity may be manifested. Whereas cultural identity crisis is detrimental to social cohesion, today’s arrangement by the ministry of education and sports and the national curriculum development centre, to have pupils at early levels of education instructed in vernacular, may not help much in tackling the challenges that come along with globalisation.

Where the mother tongue becomes the vehicle for school interaction, there is a risk of polarising a nation and fomenting social prejudice among different sections of the population.

Ethnic groups are likely to adopt pride and resentment against others, especially those that demonstrate a tendency of dominance and superiority over others, creating impressions of cultural discrimination.

In a situation where Uganda is striving to integrate with other countries in the region, introducing local languages for school instruction is not the best option. We have broader economic, political and social interests in federating with neighbouring countries; the more necessary it is to adopt a homogeneous lingua franca for all schools.

On a sad note, it is very common to find school dropouts selling fruits, groundnuts and other merchandise and operating taxis, therefore, it is unhelpful to equip them with mother tongues which technically are “blunt machetes” which they cannot rely on to fend for themselves.

Ideally, instructing such children in international languages such as Kiswahili would enhance their potential to interact with more people and participate in trade and other activities.

Countries such as China and Japan, which have been touted as success stories where the use of local languages have spurred economic development are often misunderstood.

They do not, by and large, possess numerous dialects across ethnic groups as the case is in Uganda. They are largely homogeneous.

Again, there are technical, scientific and mathematical terminologies which are better said and understood in English than in vernacular. For instance, words like ‘hexagon’ ‘neon’, ‘digestion’, whose accurate semantic translations may not be readily available in our mother tongues, could become problematic.

Rather than muddle the already inept education system further, parents and communities should be empowered to teach mother tongues to their children so that all formal institutions may remain at par across the country. For a long time, Luganda has been taught successfully as a subject at all levels of education and this should have been reciprocated for other local languages.

The writer is a student and teacher of Kiswahili

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