The magic of ignorance - English a false prophet

[Trond Trosterud]

19.1.2005 kello 11:56, Anthea Fraser Gupta kirjoitti:

  Before we look at any education system, we need to interrogate the term
> 'mother tongue'. It is not the case that Finland (...) "Basic
> education (...)
> is conducted in the mother tongue, for all
> pupils". If a child who is a native speaker of (for example) Italian or
> Bengali happens to be in a school in location X in Finland, they will
> get the same education as everyone else, not in Italian or Bengali. To
> do anything else would be impractical. 'Mother tongue' is often
> shorthand for 'dominant native language of community', and should not
> necessarily be interpreted as meaning 'native language' (a language
> spoken before any other is acquired).

That is true, and 'dominant native lg of community was also what i had
in mind. But in the Finnish system, the trditional minorities do get
their education in the mother tongue, even in villeges where the
constitute the minority:

1. The Swedish 5% minority get their whole schooling in Swedish
2. The Northern Sámi minority (3000 speakers) get instruction in many
of the school subjects in Sámi
3. Many Russian children get their basic education in Russian
3. Italian, Bengali etc. children (immigrants) have the right to
so-called mother tongue education, that is they learn to read and write
Italian or Bengali for 2-3 hours a week. But no, you are of course
right, these groups will not (and cannot) get a full education in the
language of their parents, since there will not be a society to back up
the lg in question.

Thus, I talked about native language on the society level, and not on
the individual level. But the point remains: The basic problem of all
to many educational systems is that they build not upon the language of
the society (be it country, region or village), but upon the language
of the former colonial power. This is closely linked to another
problem: The failure of recognising than an international language such
as English may be introduced, and acquired on an advanced level, even
if it taught as a foreign language, instead of as a language of
instruction. The education planners do not need to choose between
having children understand when the teacher teach math, history and
chemistry and teaching the children English. The can do both, as long
as they do not do it during the same class hours.

> Where there is a dominant community language (as there is at national
> level in Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, UK, France, USA, etc.) there
> is a default assumption that state provided basic education will be in
> that dominant language. This is often a fairly obvious choice, and not
> particularly controversial (though many people would like to see more
> opportunities for minority linguistic groups to maintain their
> ancestral
> languages). National unity in state-provided education is a reasonable
> desire of many governments and populations.
>
> In many multilingual societies, there is no uncontested dominant
> community language at national level, and sometimes not even at
> regional
> level. In India, for example, there is no language other than English
> which is equally (and, socially, inequally) the property of all
> regions.
> In such countries which have a history of European colonisation, the
> coloniser's language may be less contested that any  single other
> language.

If we take Africa first, we see that the main rationale behind their
school system is their colonial past, not their multilingualism.
Monolingual countries, such as Burundi and Rwanda, still have their
primary and secondary education in French, and not in Rundi or
Kinyarwanda. Thus, what is "not particlularly uncontroversial" in
Finland, Sweden, etc. must be argued for in Burundi. The same
discussion was raised in Finland hundred years ago, when they changed
the school system from the former colonial language (Swedish) into the
native language.

And even in multilingual countries picking out say 5-10 languages for
implementation in the school system will grant the vast majority of the
children education in mathematics, reading, writing, science, etc. in a
language they speak and understand (either their mother tongue or a
regional language they speak as a 2nd language). This is in stark
contrast to the position of the former colonial language. The result of
the present policy, say in sub-saharan Africa, is that the classes
where pupils are supposed to learn science, maths, and the history of
their own country, they instead learn French and English (a friend of
mine from Sri Lanka told me how strange the feeling was when he first
visited England, and "arrived home", to the country of the world, the
architecture, flora, and mail box shapes that he knew from his school
books only).

> What is striking about the Northern European countries (and I single
> out
> here Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands), with their
> superb education systems, is that they have a clear educational focus
> on
> the dominant community language, while at the same time teaching
> foreign
> languages (especially English) to a very high level. I am a bit
> confused
> about how Trond Trosterud is suggesting other countries respond to
> this,
> and I think we might be in agreement.

[I wouldn't say "superb", neither ironically nor in earnest. There are
always things to correct, and the recent PISA investigation certainly
does not place my home country Norway anywhere near a top :-) But I
think you have captured the essence of the Northern European system.]

I don't think I have my strongest opponents on this list, to the
contrary, I too, think we agree. What I do see is that i have opponents
in educational departments in former colonies, and among their
"advisers" that are brought in from their former colony powers. The
reason I wrote my letter was the argumentation that was *quoted* on the
list, and I wanted to offer some arguments to use whenever bumping into
such arguments in real life.

My suggestion to other countries is that they educate children in a
language they understand (how many languages to prepare education in
will then be a practical question, but if there is a will, there will
also be a way). So in that sense, yes, as coming from Northern Europe,
I think what I see from our school system is something that can be
recommended, when it comes to language policy.)

> In some countries (e.g. Malaysia) where there are many ethno-linguistic
> communities and two languages with local traditions of education and
> use
> as a lingua france (Malay and English), one of which (Malay) is
> probably
> the most common native language in the country a bilingual education
> system of some sort for everyone seems to make sense.

If pupils have Malay as their mother tongue, then the experiences from
e.g. Finland should suggest giving Malay a strong position, and teach
English as a foreign language (on an advanced level). What to do with
bilingual Malay - local lg children should be decided upon as a result
of a concrete evaluation of the linguistic situation.

> In other places
> (e.g. Chile) with no internal tradition of English then the Nordic
> model
> of English taught to everyone as a foreign language makes more sense.

Yes. And it is then important that English is not allowed to come in
and destroy the national educational system, as it in essence does in
former colonies, but that it is taught as a foreign language.

All this positive things being said about Northern Europe, I must
confess that our most skilled English teacher (and German, French
teacher) is the television. Unlike countries like France, Germany,
Turkey, Russia, (Chile?), we never dub foreign television programs or
people interviewed on the news, instead we subtitle. This provides for
a couple of hours extra teaching a day...

> Malaysia, though not as rich as the Nordic countries, is highly
> developed and can deliver mass education efficiently to the entire
> popularion.

Yes, no doubt about that. And this is not an issue of money, but of
will and politics.

>   There are many places where this is not possible, and where
> it is not feasible to teach anything other than  a locally dominant
> language to the majority population. In India, for example, the
> priority
> is clearly to teach the dominant STATE (not national) language in basic
> education.

Yes. And India is not a country in the sense Burundi, Latvia or Finland
are countries. India is a continent, with a serious lg policy and
educational policy, when it comes to basic level education (if I were
minister of education I would perhaps pay some more attention to the
minority languages within each state, but that discussion needs to be
kept on a more detailed level than we do here). The problem with India
is rather that Hindi leaves the scene to English only in too many
domains.

>  This was discussed by Jean D'souza in connection with the
> education (in Marathi) of street children and child workers in the
> Indian city of Pune: these children were not getting education in
> either
> their mother tongues (often), nor in either of the national languages
> of
> India (Hindi and English), but they were getting basic education in the
> language that optimised their access to the governmental and cultural
> structures they most needed.

So, let's hope they understood what was said in this optimised
language, then... :-) (perhaps this was what you meant)

> India has not been as successful as Finland
> (or as Malaysia) in equalising access to education, so it remains the
> case that access to English and (in areas outside its region of
> dominance, and to a lesser extent) Hindi is associated with social
> privilege.

I would like to stress that the educational system in the Nordic
countries was established in a period of our history when the countries
were very poor (Norwegian sailors won freight contracts due to their
exceptional low wages). A good basic educational system must rely upon
local forces (for writing textbooks, teaching the pupils, etc.), and
their wages will reflect the local level. Making a competitive
educational system should thus be much easier than, say, making a
competitive army and airforce, since in the latter case the weapons
must be bought on the international market, to international prices.

Also, there is a hen-and-egg reasoning in the situation you describe:
"Only the English speaking are rich, and we will give education only to
the ones speaking English => only the rich/privileged people will be
able to utilise the educational system". Language planning and planning
of education are political actions, the key question being "for whom".
Politicians may of course build a school for the social and/or
linguistic elite, as they most often do, but they should not be allowed
to get away with arguments claiming that this is in the interest of the
whole people, or in order to increase wealth by the poor, or other
Orwellian phrases.

> My message is that places are different, and that local needs must be
> met.

They certainly are, and they certainly must. No disagreement here.

But some things are always the same. If, in a region (be it monolingual
or with a dominating lingua franca spoken by all the children, I see no
cultural or political reasons for having them learn their basic
multiplication table in a language they do not understand (other than
the grim heritage of imperialism). If the children are bilingual, one
may always argue that some language is more suited than another to be
used as lg of instruction (according to the local situation), but no
child is without language, unless the educational system forces it to
attend school without any.

Trond.

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Trond Trosterud                                        t +47 7764 4763
Institutt for språkvitskap, Det humanistiske fakultet  m +47 950 70140
N-9037 Universitetet i Tromsø, Noreg                   f +47 7764 4239
Trond.Trosterud (a) hum.uit.no          http://www.hum.uit.no/a/trond/
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