Language politics and the denial of cultural identity

In all former British colonies in Africa, the use of the English language for teaching and learning in primary schools has always been a contentious national issue. The argument centres around three positions, each coming from a different ideological perspective.

One advocates a strong preference for exclusively English schooling where teachers, regardless of ethnic or tribal extraction, teach all subjects in English.

Another promotes a bilingual primary schooling system where English and African indigenous languages are used concurrently.

The last wants to see indigenous African languages used exclusively in the first years of basic schooling. After that English language would be gradually introduced as a foreign language and eventually become the medium of teaching and learning.

A variation of this position advocated maintaining English as a foreign language throughout basic schooling while African indigenous languages are used for teaching and learning.

Over the decades the first position has invariably prevailed, not because it has the strongest arguments or loudest voices relative to the other two groups. The fact is that the first group always gets massive moral and material support from wealthy segments of the population whose principal future interest is to educate their children in English schools abroad.

The first position also gets enormous philosophical support from most African university academics, who use their access to the English news media along with the classroom to promote the status quo.

Generally, African academics are a reactionary force in African societies. They very rarely initiate or champion any proposals for national development, but oppose national plans aimed at challenging or replacing the status quo.

A good example is the recent statement made by the Nigerian federal Minister for Science and Technology Dr Ogbonnaya Onu. According to the minister, the Nigerian federal government is enacting a plan to use three Nigerian indigenous languages to teach science and mathematics at the primary school level.

The minister rationalised the plan on the grounds of dwindling interest in science and mathematics among Nigerian youth and the urgent need to give science and mathematics a priority in national development. The federal science and technology minister, in collaboration with the Education Minister Mallam Adamu Adamu, has solicited the assistance of some Nigerian universities to roll out the plan.

The minister’s plan to use three indigenous languages to teach science and mathematics has attracted a flurry of responses from some Nigerians including university academics. About a month ago, Tunde Fatunde wrote an article in University World News in which he quoted the opposing voices of some Nigerian professors to the Nigerian federal government plan.

They argued that the Nigerian youth’s disengagement with and disinterest in science and mathematics learning at school had nothing to do with the language of teaching and learning. On the contrary, they argued, it has everything to do with lack of funding and inconsistent national science education policies.

However, what matters is not just how much money is allocated; what it is actually used for is more important than its size.

In Nigeria, a lion’s share of that meagre allocation is often siphoned into private pockets. Consequently, the portion that trickles down to its appropriate places would be comparable to a hummingbird’s meal!

Nigeria’s inconsistent education policy may be attributable to the military coups that characterised much of the political landscape in the 1960s and 1970s. In some cases, policy implementation failures forced the government to change direction resulting in an unstable policy environment. Yet at that time, Nigerian universities did not play any role in providing either policy design strategies or policy implementation research to assist the government in the policy domain.

Youth disengagement with sciences and mathematics in Nigeria and other developing regions of the world can be traced to a variety of etiologies. While the lack of funding to purchase science teaching and learning resources, build and maintain science laboratories and train science and mathematics teachers are contributory causes, there are other more significant etiologies.

This is because during the so-called good old days of science and mathematics education in Nigeria, no attempts were made to develop local capacities to build the requisite science teaching and learning resources.

Second, empirical research indicates that teaching pedagogy is a significant factor in galvanising young people’s interest in science and mathematics. Teaching pedagogies based primarily on rigid memorisation of facts and figures, depersonalisation of the learning process and the failure to incorporate elements of the young people’s worlds and their communities are highly unlikely to engage the youth.

Self-worth

Finally, unless the language of teaching and learning issue is resolved it is impossible to pinpoint which of the possible causations is most significant.

As the federal minister of science and technology rightly pointed out, students grow up with their indigenous languages in their home environment. They communicate in those languages on a daily basis with their parents, siblings, relatives and community members. Those languages are inextricably part of the lens through which they look at the world.

Despite this, when they enter a school classroom they are expected to cast off those parts of themselves and assume strange, foreign selves. This has immense negative psychological consequences at the individual and group levels.

This helps to explain why small linguistic populations in Northern Europe such as the Finns, Norwegians and Icelanders have stuck with their indigenous languages but learn English as an additional language in order to be able to communicate with the rest of the world.

Contrary to popular misconception, the language problem is not quintessentially a student problem; it is equally a teacher problem. A growing body of literature on the use of foreign languages for teaching backs this up.

In primary school classrooms in Nigeria, it is not uncommon to observe primary school teachers struggling helplessly to express themselves proficiently in English. How can students develop the requisite English proficiency skills when their teachers, who are the central component of their English socio-environment, lack proficiency in that language?

Why is English language teaching and learning in Nigerian primary school classrooms reduced to mere grammar regurgitation?

These are relevant questions that should be addressed by reactionary African university academics, many of whom also lack oral English communication fluency. By the way, who would believe that English language proficiency does not include oral communication?

English as an international language

In Fatunde’s article some Nigerian university academics were quoted as stating that indigenous languages are more suitable for drama, visual arts and music, while the English language is a driver for economic and technological development.

This is an old, platitudinal argument. Juxtapose this argument to the reverence which African university academics accord to indigenous African knowledge in international scholarly forums. Is indigenous language not an integral part of indigenous knowledge? Yet in Africa, some university academics place little value on African indigenous languages.

It is absolutely true that an English language facility allows one to access a vast majority of the published literature in the world. Besides, an overwhelming number of international trade agreements and contracts are written in English. In fact, almost all multinational or transnational corporations conduct their business transactions in English.

Moreover, possession of English communication skills facilitates international labour mobility in contradistinction to other languages. These demonstrate the dominant position of English as a language of power.

Nonetheless, this argument is not applicable to primary schooling which is a formative stage where cultural identity and self-worth are crucial so that children can develop a positive attitude of themselves and their cultural communities. Africa has experienced a complex continent-wide phenomenon whereby children start primary school in foreign languages, whether as a result of internal or external colonialism. This causes untold psychological damage to their self-esteem.

Little wonder that Africa has become a permanent patient, dependent perpetually on the developed regions for solutions to its basic existential problems. In spite of the dominant international status of the English language, local or national languages continue to play increasingly popular roles in the internal development processes of nation-states in other regions.

Constructing a mathematics and science registry

Again in Fatunde’s article, some Nigerian university academics directed attention to the difficulties in translating mathematical equations and formulas into indigenous languages. The good news is that those academics did not say it is impossible to achieve that translation. Transformative changes in society are not an easy undertaking. They require commitment, perseverance and appropriate strategies to achieve the intended outcomes.

However, any plan to teach mathematics and science in indigenous languages will require the careful development and construction of a registry for each discipline. The registry will consist of precise definitions of common mathematical terms and terminologies in those indigenous languages.

Many of the mathematics and science symbols will remain unchanged except where they are predominantly language-based. For example, the Pythagorean formula will remain intact, including the hypotenuse, the name of the longest side of the right-angle triangle. The quadratic, slope, distance and circle formulae will also remain the same as in English.

However, indigenous names for triangle, circle, distance, ratio, proportion, fraction, percent, speed, time, reciprocal, equation, quadratic and numerous others will need to be constructed.

It is very important that the Nigerian universities whose assistance is being sought by the minister of science and technology and the minister of education to develop the plan, work in collaboration with community leaders and experts in those language regions.

Community leaders and traditional experts in most cases are custodians of their culture and languages. In other words, universities alone cannot develop the language plan without community input. It is an obvious fact that university authorities charged with the task are not necessarily experts in Nigerian indigenous languages.

Multilingual Nigeria

Some people contend that Nigeria has more than 200 languages and 400 dialects. This situation, they argue, makes it increasingly difficult to select three languages for teaching and learning science. With Nigeria’s estimated population of 188 million, it is possible to speculate that the three indigenous languages are most likely to be Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. These languages have an estimated 90 million, 30 million, and 35 million speakers respectively.

While choosing the three majority indigenous languages makes sense, other minority languages must be given due constitutional protection. In addition, a social contract should be signed between the leaders of the majority languages and those of the minority languages. The contract should state specifically the obligations of the former and their people to respect and acknowledge the humanity of the latter.

This is crucial indeed for peace, unity and stability. In a multilingual country one of the key factors militating against the adoption of an indigenous language for teaching is the fear that the group whose language is adopted may regard themselves as socially superior to the other linguistic groups.

The Nigerian government should also mount a vigorous national publicity campaign, emphasising the fact that those indigenous languages were selected based solely on their numerical speakers and that they are not inherently superior to the other indigenous languages. The Nigerian government should proactively ensure the smooth implementation of the policy at the state and municipal levels.

Potential tension

The prominent Nigerian education researcher and theorist, the late Babatunde Fafunwa, did critical foundational research into using indigenous languages as a medium of teaching in Nigeria. The results show in detail the benefits of using indigenous languages to teach in primary schools and the psychological effects of not doing so.

That pivotal research should not be ignored or discounted in the development of any language plans in Nigeria or other African countries.

Nigerian university academics should be careful in their responses to the minister’s plan. Comments unsupported by empirical data tend to build unnecessary opposition and engender tribal tensions. They also distract the attention of those universities assisting the ministers in developing the language plan.

Dr Eric Fredua-Kwarteng is a private educational consultant in Canada.