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<h2>SA’s own Tower of Babel misguided</h2>
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by Hans Pienaar,
December 07 2015, 06:02</div>
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<img src="http://www.bdlive.co.za/incoming/2015/12/06/stellenbosch-students-protest-september-1-2015/ALTERNATES/crop_400x250/Stellenbosch+students+protest+September+1+2015" alt="" height="250px" width="400px">
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Open Stellenbosch should be replicated at the
University of Cape Town, to campaign for Afrikaans to be included as a
medium of instruction. Picture: THE TIMES</div>
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<span>Related articles</span>
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<a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/education/2015/12/02/will-the-uber-of-tertiary-education-please-stand-up">
Will the Uber of tertiary education please stand up</a>
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<a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/education/2015/12/01/stellenbosch-university-decision-called-a-victory-for-afrikaans-and-a-setback-for-transformation">
Stellenbosch University decision called a victory for Afrikaans, and a setback for transformation</a>
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<a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2015/11/16/better-to-teach-mandarin-at-university-level">
Better to teach Mandarin at university level</a>
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<a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/education/2015/11/19/academics-support-english-plan-at-maties">
Academics support English plan at Maties</a>
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<a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/education/2015/11/17/maties-not-scrapping-afrikaans-completely">
Maties not scrapping Afrikaans completely</a>
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<span>In this article</span>
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<div class=""><p>IN recent weeks, President Jacob Zuma and
South African Broadcasting Corporation boss Hlaudi Motsoeneng have been
mocked for their poor command of the English language — and many believe
they deserve this. But how many of us can truly say we speak English
better than them? The 4-million-plus South Africans who say the language
is their mother tongue? One million of us? One hundred thousand?</p><p>I
can’t claim I have a 100% command of English, even though I make my
living as an editor fixing other people’s language — recently I changed
"soldier on" to "shoulder on". I’ve lost count of the times I have come
across "damp squids" or "just deserts".</p><p>But when debating the
language policy of Stellenbosch University, it has been taken for
granted that we can all speak English properly. The university’s council
announced last Monday that Afrikaans and English would have equal
status, and it would henceforth devote itself to multilingualism.</p><p>All
sides can claim victory. Open Stellenbosch should be happy with the
undertaking that any demand to be taught in English should be met, even
if it means that, eventually, the offering in English supercedes that of
Afrikaans.</p><p>But some in the movement for transformation have
already rejected this advance. Their major gripe, expressed in a
petition signed by hundreds of lecturers a few weeks ago, seems to be
that multilingualism is a "guise" to retain Afrikaans as the medium of
instruction.</p><p>Taking a stand against multilingualism, and assuming
that SA’s English proficiency is strong enough to step into the void,
recalls the infamous Macaulay Minute. In the colonial power’s debate on
education in India, Lord Thomas Macaulay declared in 1835 that all
indigenous languages should be regarded as inferior to English,
including those as ancient as Sanskrit and as widely spoken as Arabic.</p><p>The
Macaulay Minute became a keystone in ideologies of white supremacy
driving the British empire, and of the policy to use English as a tool
to co-opt local intelligentsia into the strategy to govern territories
with only a handful of whites.</p><p>While it is true that English is
the language the most people in the world claim they can understand, it
is the mother tongue of far fewer, about 300-to 400-million, ranked
third. In SA, it also comes in third, after isiZulu and Afrikaans.</p><p>The
more convincing argument is that English is the language of science and
technology, but this is not a fait accompli. When science started to
become a major preoccupation in the 19th century, English shared this
status with French and German. The latest major triumph of science, the
Higgs boson, was discovered by scientists from all over the world, many
of whom struggled to express themselves in English.</p><p>ACCORDING to
Michael Gordin in his book Scientific Babel, German became so
stigmatised by the two world wars that scientists shunned it, preferring
English.</p><p>During the Cold War, Anglo-American governments poured
vast sums of money into the translation of Russian scientific papers
into English, for their scientists to pirate new findings as quickly as
possible and so further cement its status.</p><p>The primacy of English
as a language of science is not due to any magical property, but to the
machinations of power. This will change, as Korean, Chinese and Japanese
grow in stature.</p><p>A key concern that may explain the anxiety over
local languages among some Maties staffers is that it would compromise
their ability to plug into global academia.</p><p>What really happened
with the Open Stellenbosch movement was that the short-term,
self-interest of a handful of black students — some of them from foreign
countries — merged with the long-term needs of globalised academics.
This reinforced a trend started in 2000, when Nelson Mandela’s solution
for indigenous languages was implemented: at least two universities
should be devoted to each of SA’s 11 languages, provided they also made
lectures available in English.</p><p>As historian Hermann Giliomee has
shown, when Stellenbosch University started offering lectures in
English, it quickly became a victim of its own success and student
numbers exploded.</p><p>The percentage of black Afrikaans students
surged, but they were vastly outnumbered by white, English-speaking
students from other parts of the country.</p><p>The least taxpaying
South Africans could expect from state-subsidised universities is that
their policies be geared towards solving local problems and that they
provide personnel for local enterprises and effort.</p><p>A local
problem is the education disaster. Many factors play a part, but poor
literacy has been a consistent culprit. In 2013, the Department of Basic
Education’s annual national assessments found only 37% of Grade 9
pupils were considered literate.</p><p>Despite this, students enrol at
universities with the belief that they can understand English, and
because their marks are routinely adjusted up — ironically, to make up
for the fact that they are taught in a nonindigenous language. The
result is SA’s spectacular university failure rates.</p><p>Bettina
Wyngaard, a black lecturer at Stellenbosch University, calls it a
"horrendous fallacy" that her colleagues "can speak English with the
same facility as Afrikaans, and that their students can properly
understand English".</p><p>BLACK students have a double challenge: not
only do many have to cope with a vastly inferior education in maths and
science, they also have to master a language that is not their mother
tongue. It is absolutely no surprise that the average failure rate for
first-years is 60%.</p><p>The dividing line in our society, between the
haves and the have-nots, has become the ability to speak English. It is
probably best seen in the diverse fates of Zimbabweans who have fled to
SA to escape Robert Mugabe’s misrule. Those who mastered English have
been welcomed by companies chasing black economic empowerment points;
those with deficient English settle in shacks, where their linguistic
disabilities became their identity — "makwerekweres".</p><p>Amalgamated
Beverages Industries, Africa’s largest bottler of Coca-Cola, earlier
this year launched a project in Matjhabeng, Free State, inviting young
entrepreneurs to be trained as vendors. About 2,000 responded, this was
cut down to 66, and eventually 22 – with proficiency in English as one
of the criteria.</p><p>This is a stark example of the application of
Macaulay’s strategy; he advocated that English be promoted among "the
higher class of natives at the seats of government", as crucial to the
divide-and-rule strategy of the British empire.</p><p>SA obviously needs
to improve the teaching of English in schools. This cannot be the only
solution, as the backlog of teachers who can teach in English is huge.
We also have to tackle teaching in domestic languages, and changing our
universities into multilingual institutions will be vital.</p><p>If Open
Stellenbosch wants to avoid being tagged as Macauley acolytes, it will
need to start a new chapter, Open UCT, and agitate for Afrikaans to be
introduced as a medium of tuition there in order to serve poor, black
Afrikaans speakers from the Kaapse platteland.</p><p><a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2015/12/07/sas-own-tower-of-babel-misguided">http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2015/12/07/sas-own-tower-of-babel-misguided</a><br></p></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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