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<h1 class="gmail-bold">Languages aren't racist, people are</h1>
<span id="gmail-spnDate" class="gmail-block gmail-datestamp">2018-01-28 06:01</span>
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<p class="gmail-left">Russel Kaschula; Zakeera Docrat And Monwabisi Ralarala</p>
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<article id="gmail-article-body" class="gmail-clr_left"><p><strong>Linguicism
can be linguistically argued to be racism, but the reality is that
pupils will learn best in the language they understand best, write
Russell Kaschula, Zakeera Docrat and Monwabisi Ralarala.</strong></p><p>T<span>here
is clearly a disjuncture between the intentions of section 6 of the
Constitution, which says that “the state must take practical and
positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use ... ” of the
African languages, and what is happening on the ground. </span></p><p>The
recent Constitutional Court judgment concerning the University of the
Free State saw the acceptance of the university’s English-only language
policy without explaining how multilingualism will be implemented. It is
as if multilingualism is an afterthought. The conflation of linguicism
with racism without unpacking the language complexities that faced us
during the recent Hoërskool Overvaal language debacle is another case in
point. </p><p>Linguicism can be linguistically argued to be racism, but
the reality is that pupils will learn best in the language they
understand best – their mother tongue. According to the 2011 national
census, English is the mother tongue of only 9.6% of South Africans. </p><div style="text-align:center" class="gmail-ad_container_24"><div id="gmail-ad-600x50-1" class="gmail-24ad600x50"><div class="gmail-noad"></div></div></div><p>The
neocolonial efforts to homogenise and standardise the teaching system
as an English one is linguistic imperialism or linguicism: it will only
benefit the English mother tongue speaker, and it is destined to
encourage exclusion and inequality. </p><p>With the exception of the
Economic Freedom Fighters, no one has mentioned the role that mother
tongue education should play in our classrooms. The knee-jerk reaction
against Afrikaans simply means a win for the English-only brigade and
neocolonialism. </p><p>If our society is serious about development, this
cannot be done through a colonial language, at least for those who
still suffer from the shackles of apartheid and who have little or no
access to English. </p><p>That does not mean we should not learn English
as a language, that it should not be properly taught as a subject and
that we should not be proficient in it, but it surely does not mean that
we should be taught English, especially if our proficiency is
debatable.</p><p>A one-size-fits-all language policy with English as the
medium of instruction will not work as everyone does not have equal
access to this language. One only becomes proficient in a language when
the right conditions exist, such as proper teaching of the language and
daily exposure to it. Arguably, in educational spaces, real learning can
be achieved by embracing languages, particularly marginalised African
languages, and mediating perceptions of reality by linking language to
identity. </p><p>This emerging linguicism, or English monolingualism, is
based on the constitutional principle of “reasonable practicability”,
which does not afford everyone the right to receive education in the
official language(s) of choice in public institutions. </p><p>In the
University of the Free State case, the majority judgment of the
Constitutional Court did not address the language question in relation
to the country’s multilingual landscape. Justice Johan Froneman, in his
dissenting judgment, rightfully pointed out that there was no reference
made to the state’s obligation to advance the country’s other official
languages. The Constitutional Court furthermore failed to hear the views
of mother tongue African language speakers, as well as those students
and lecturers directly affected by the decision to accept an
English-only policy. </p><p>Froneman reasoned that public opinion on the
matter would have clarified what retired Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang
Moseneke referred to as collateral irony in the Ermelo language policy
case. Collateral irony being where African language speaking parents and
pupils prefer being taught in English instead of their mother tongue.</p><p>Further
clarification in this regard would be why one language with a colonial
history – English – was chosen, but Afrikaans was rejected. In our
opinion, what is needed is a proper and linguistically sound
understanding of multilingualism as a resource – educationally, legally
and societally. </p><p>Only one in three pupils eventually reach Grade 12, largely because they cannot cope with the medium of instruction – English. </p><p>There
is no doubt that the language of power in South Africa is English and
it is used to control every facet of life in this country. One’s
education, from early childhood development to tertiary education, is
largely controlled though the medium of English, with the exception of
the first three grades of school. In this multilingual society, where
large portions of the population have unequal access to English, this is
problematic and one has to question who is actually an English speaker.
A rudimentary knowledge of English disempowers a person in the same way
that Afrikaans was used to disempower pupils in 1976. </p><p>The
curricula of schools and universities should not be defined by
imperialist and colonialist ideology, but by African values and
philosophy, where the African voice underpinned by African languages is
vocal, not a silent voice that accepts English monolingualism at the
expense of multilingualism. </p><p>New models should evolve in which
language is not used to exclude any pupil. This requires bilingual and
multilingual pedagogic models to be used in the classroom alongside
English. Even monolingual teachers and lecturers can be taught to use
such models in the classroom. </p><p>There is an inability to grasp the
fact that cognition takes place in a language that one understands best,
normally the mother tongue, and it is still possible to acquire good
English skills while learning it as a subject. </p><p>The Cofimvaba
project in the Eastern Cape, where high school maths and science are
taught in isiXhosa, and the subsequent improvement in pass rates, is a
clear example of the success of being educated in one’s mother tongue. </p><p>It
is what is taught and how it is taught that is important – the language
of tuition does not determine whether an institution is racist or
tribalist. </p><p><em>Kaschula is professor of African Language Studies;
Docrat is a doctoral student in African Language Studies; at Rhodes and
Ralarala is associate professor in language practice at CPUT</em></p></article>
- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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