Uganda: We Need a Patrotic School Language

[Harold Schiffman]

 We Need a Patrotic School Language

The Monitor (Kampala)


30 January 2008  Posted to the web 29 January 2008

By Mary Amuge


Reference is made to an article, Language policy hampering unity in
Africa (Daily Monitor, January 23). The writer analysed the language
policy in a very compelling manner. Anyone today engaged in business
or employment that brings him/her in interaction with other
communities in Africa and beyond will agree that this is not the time
when the local language should take precedence over common national or
international languages. Earlier this year, this writer felt alienated
from fellow east Africans at a conference in Nairobi when participants
from Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania came together and Swahili emerged as
their preferred language yet as a Ugandan, I could not talk beyond a
mere greeting!

I have had time to consult about the current language of instruction
approved for the lower primary pupils by the ministry of education in
Uganda. It is only urban (Kampala) schools that have a choices to make
between English and Luganda or any other local language preferred by
the school management. Other districts must choose from Luo, Ateso,
Akarimojong, Runyakitara, Luganda, and Lugbara or any other language
approved by a District Language Board. But such a language must have a
written orthography. By implication, if Uganda has 81 districts, 81
languages or more could end up on different pupils' curricula because
some communities in the same district speak different dialects.

A language board in Kasese district may choose Lukonzho for their
schools even though it is located in the greater Tooro region. Are we
really promoting equal opportunities especially given the fact that
the Equal Opportunities Commission is in place? Another dilemma arises
in the case of intercultural marriages where a girl from Isingiro
district who is a primary school teacher marries a man from Amolatar
District. She would certainly find it hard to adapt to her new work
station if the only option she has is to teach in Langi in her
husband's home district.

It would even be hard for her to assist her own Langi- speaking
children with their homework since she may not be conversant with the
language in which her children are taught at school. The timing of the
policy is wrong.  For most languages, there is no written material for
teachers and pupils to use apart from what the curriculum development
centre (CDC) is trying to draft hurriedly with a lot of grammatical
and orthographical errors. In some cases, the CDC has even
overassumed.

Take a case of the Bugisu region - where all materials are in
Lumasaba, a common accent among the Bagisu from the south. An elder in
Budadiri will look at this as cultural invasion. This has ever
happened when the Bible was written in Lumasaba and a lot of
opposition emerged within the church on whether this is the right
language for each section of the community in Bugisu region. The
ministry of education has never made local languages part of the
teacher-training curriculum (I need to be corrected if I'm wrong). How
do they expect the teachers to teach what they have never been
oriented to? What they got at the launching of the current curriculum
was a few weeks of discussions and were then commissioned to implement
the language policy.

Are we not killing education in Uganda? Language is a sign of identity
and a national language is a form of national identity. When we speak
English in an international conference, one is able to tell a Nigerian
from a Ugandan, an Ethiopian from a Tanzanian, a South African from a
Ghanaian on the basis of their articulation and accent. That already
gives us identity and we should aim at fostering this uniqueness.  The
Ministry of Education should state the principles they based on to
arrive at the current language policy for Primary One pupils. Gone are
the days when vernacular speaking was forbidden and punishable, when
English speaking toddlers were a centre of admiration, and when the
nursery school was a symbol of nurturing children's fluency in
English!



http://allafrica.com/stories/200801291002.html
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