<div dir="ltr"><p>Choosing any single medium of instruction at university level simply reinforces racial exclusivity.</p>
<a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-06-11-our-cultures-should-interact-not-just-coexist" title="">
<img src="http://cdn.mg.co.za/crop/content/images/2015/06/11/amartya-senedit_landscape.jpg/676x380/" alt="Rocking the boat: ‘The vocal defence of multiculturalism that we frequently hear these days is very often nothing more than a plea for plural monoculturalism,’ Amartya Sen writes. (Matthew Lloyd, Getty Images)
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<div id="body_content"><p style>Rocking
the boat: ‘The vocal defence of multiculturalism that we frequently
hear these days is very often nothing more than a plea for plural
monoculturalism,’ Amartya Sen writes. Photo: Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images</p><p style>Ideas
about which language to use as the medium of instruction remain
contested around the world in education and politics, especially in
countries described as multicultural.
</p><p style>In China, bilingual policies are meant to promote the
state and community languages in multilingual regions. The
interpretation of such policies influences the survival of indigenous
languages and also the ability of communities to gain access to higher
education and economic and social mobility. </p><div id="tt-wrapper9cd6d24" class="" style="margin:0px 0px 10px;height:0px;text-align:center;max-width:100%;min-width:230px;overflow:hidden"> <div id="tt-mention9cd6d24" class="" style>ADVERTISING</div><div id="tt-container9cd6d24" class="" style> </div> </div><p style>In
Yunnan, which has great linguistic diversity, the state adopted
bilingual policies in which Mandarin was paired with English in
secondary schools, but the local languages were used in primary schools.</p><p style>Sociolinguist
Catherine Snow has demonstrated that whereas Mandarin is now perceived
as a threat to regional languages English has come to be associated
with opportunities for mobility. </p><p style>The challenges for
indigenous languages are many, not least the phenomenon of 21st-century
urbanisation – in which the languages of the regions come together,
making the use of a lingua franca inevitable.</p><p style>These
dilemmas echo those leading to the Soweto uprising of 1976, which was
targeted against another policy of compulsory bilingualism. In this
context, the state’s insistence on mother-tongue education was
paradoxically regarded as reinforcing race exclusivity. </p><p style>The
transition to compulsory Afrikaans together with the compulsory use of
the mother tongue provided circumstances in which English seemed to be a
the state by South Africans resisting apartheid. </p><p style>In the
new South Africa these competing needs (or dilemmas) are framed by the
Constitution in terms of rights to education in the mother tongue.
Though the Language in Education Policy of 1997 and the Language in
Higher Education Policy of 2002 promote indigenous languages (including
English and Afrikaans), neither policy allows for the preservation of
languages in isolation from the transformation ideals of the
Constitution, in which multiculturalism is key.</p><p style>When, for
example, a school chooses isiZulu or Afrikaans as mediums of
instruction, people may be excluded on the basis of both language and
other variables (such as race). </p><p style>In the case of
Afrikaans, this restriction privileges white Afrikaans-speakers as, by
default, a “majority” of speakers in many schools; language rights win,
but multiculturalism loses.</p><p style>A rights-based discourse
leads private education groups such as Curro to consider it desirable to
“stream” children according to language preference. Except, of course,
such streaming is race-based, by default. </p><p style>Failing to
acknowledge the constitutional framing (nonracism, nonsexism and
integration) of language policies lays bare another revealing fracture
in South Africa: multiculturalism.</p><p style>When Nobel laureate
Amartya Sen considered whether multiculturalism had succeeded in the
United Kingdom following generations of postcolonial migrant settlement,
he asked: “Does the existence of a diversity of cultures, which might
pass each other like ships in the night, count as a successful case of
multiculturalism?” </p><p style>His question is relevant in South
Africa, not only in terms of language and culture, but also in terms of
issues such as xenophobia or equally shocking cases of corrective rape
and gender violence.</p><p style>Language and culture are often seen
as contiguous. Objecting to the use of Afrikaans as a language of
instruction in schools and universities might be viewed as opposition to
race integration and the notion of what it means to belong together to a
new South Africa. </p><p style>The basis for that refusal might be
framed in terms of protecting mother-tongue education, but language
protection and race exclusion run too closely together. Because racial
integration is a touchstone for postapartheid South Africa, its
perceived refusal, on the basis of language, ethnicity or religion,
evokes powerful emotions.</p><p style>Sen writes: “The vocal defence
of multiculturalism that we frequently hear these days is very often
nothing more than a plea for plural monoculturalism.” </p><p style>What
role does multilingualism play in the creation of plural
monolingualism or multiculturalism? University language policies must be
considered in terms of the extent to which they promote transformation
goals (racial integration, nonsexism, nonracism and multiculturalism).</p><p style>Higher
education has three features in South Africa: functionally
multilingual, bilingual and monolingual. Many former Afrikaans-medium
institutions have opted for policies that have been termed functionally
multilingual.</p><p style>Staff and students “choose” the language
advertised as the medium on a campus and, where necessary, there are
options to have it interpreted into another language, or to attend a
parallel lecture in that language.</p><p style>In the first instance,
interpreting in the “primary” language stops short of developing
indigenous languages as languages for higher education. In the second
instance, offering a parallel lecture in another language closes down
opportunities for intercultural understanding and integration. Both
“options” make engaging with diversity difficult.</p><p style>Universities
have a mandate to develop indigenous languages, but to adopt any
language as a lingua franca (at least in terms of teaching and learning)
might mean that a university becomes a narrowly regional or vapidly
national institution. </p><p>English, a minority language, is currently the lingua franca of choice, but it cannot function as a way to people. </p><p style>Thus
all groups are required to contribute to the notion of what South
Africanness must mean, from the perspectives of their differences and
similarities: in other words, from the perspective of diversity.
Universities should lead debates about questions of renewal,
rejuvenation and transformation.</p><p style>There are alternatives
to functionally multilingual practices in institutions such as Rhodes
University and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where some provision
exists for the promotion of additive bilingualism (in which indigenous
languages are compulsory and specific requirements for some
professions). Though these are nascent examples, they do represent
new-generational thinking: away from one language, one culture or one
language, one university. </p><p>Integration has to be planned, supported and lived if diversity is not to be simply about “tolerance”.</p><p style>Then there are the monolingual institutions where no indigenous language is promoted, taught or otherwise used officially. </p><p style>Here,
students do not self-divide along racial or linguistic lines (Walter
Sisulu University is an example) because almost all students are black
anyway. </p><p style>Yet, even here, the “choice” of one language does not attract diversity in which race and language have to be recognised.</p><p style>This
latter context is close to Sen’s notion of plural monoculturalism and
the University of Zululand might exemplify this: the dominant language
of the community is isiZulu but the language of the university is mostly
English. All students and teachers are compelled to find expression
through English. </p><p style>Such places may foster a strong local
nationalism, but in the absence of any recognition (intellectual as well
as social) or engagement with diversity, such institutions struggle to
appeal to anyone other than an already dominant group. Unsurprisingly,
debates about what diversity means are difficult to get going and hard
for people to get excited about.</p><p style>Finally, some linguists
suggest that languages must be associated with institutions to retain
“higher-order” purposes, culturally and linguistically. </p><p style>In
South Africa, the Federation of Afrikaner Cultural Organisations and
the Afrikaans Language and Culture Association are examples of bodies
that promote and develop Afrikaans successfully without an institutional
base at any one university. </p><p style>The historical privileging
of Afrikaans and English requires that other languages be developed,
too, and that universities commit to developing indigenous languages
because it is there that academic expertise can be grown – but, more
than this, so as also to recognise, through multilingualism, the need to
engage with a South African multiculturalism.</p><p><em>Robert Balfour is dean of education sciences at North-West University</em></p><div class="">Originally published in: <a href="http://mg.co.za/publication/gettingahead">Getting Ahead</a><br><br><a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-06-11-our-cultures-should-interact-not-just-coexist">http://mg.co.za/article/2015-06-11-our-cultures-should-interact-not-just-coexist</a><br></div></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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