A Project by the English Academy of Southern Africa
The question of mother-tongue education in South Africa remains a vexed one. On the one hand, it seems reasonable and desirable that learners should be able to receive education in their mother tongue, if they so wish. On the other hand, there are some very real difficulties involved in the implementation of this ideal. The purpose of this paper is to clarify what these difficulties are, and then to suggest what needs to be done to overcome them.
This year I have had the pleasure, as a retired English teacher and high school principal, of lecturing to the PGCE students at Stellenbosch University who are training to become English teachers. I set them an assignment entitled, ‘English in South Africa – a double-edged sword’. I was impressed by many of the assignments.
According to the 2001 Census (Statistics South Africa, 2001:5), English is the home language of only 8,2% of South Africans. In a diverse country with 11 official languages, English acts as an important lingua franca in commerce both within the country as well as in international contacts. It follows that a solid knowledge of English opens definite social and economic doors for South African learners. Having one’s education in English will definitely give a learner ample time to become fluent in English. But is it really to the child’s advantage in the longer term?
The Constitution recognizes a total of eleven official languages, all of which must ‘enjoy parity of esteem and must be treated equitably’ (SA Constitution, subsection 6, no. 4). This constitutional assertion often generates the impression that all official languages in South Africa also enjoy equal usage. Although this might be the case if ‘usage’ includes situations where languages are used as informal or private forms of communication, the reality is that in most formal contexts such as professional environments or sectors of commerce, the majority of languages fall into disuse, except for English.
The South African constitution states that all eleven official languages must ‘enjoy parity of esteem and must be treated equitably’. Equity refers to fairness and impartiality, and the English Academy of South Africa has a very valid point that this is not the same as calling for equal use (Venter Handout p. 1). In reality, English is still the most widely-used language across the nation, and is the language of parliament and general administration. The problem with this situation is that English holds a possible threat to the ten other official languages of the country.
Graham Bam puts the main problem plain and simply in a letter to the Cape Times: ‘The debate about the use of English as a medium of instruction is going nowhere.’ No more research, theories or proposals. We are running out of time. We have to make a decision.
Greater attention to language education in multilingual schooling is vital if we are to achieve national unity and social reconciliation through the removal of legacies of linguistic inequalities and prejudices that underpinned the racism of our past (Young, cited in Heugh, Siegrühn & Plüddemann 1995: 111).
It has been said that English is one of the hardest languages to learn to speak and spell correctly. The poem ‘The Chaos’ represents a virtuoso feat of composition, a mammoth catalogue of about 800 of the most notorious irregularities of traditional English orthography, skilfully versified (if with a few awkward lines) into couplets with alternating feminine and masculine rhymes. You should find this both entertaining and useful for teaching spelling and homophones.
