[lg policy] lecture: Towards a language policy for education in Suriname

[Harold Schiffman]

Department of Language and Culture Studies Seminar
Thursday, 1 July 2010, 15.45-17.00 – PZ 5

Towards a language policy for education in Suriname
Sjaak Kroon & Kutlay Yagmur
Department of Language and Culture Studies seminar series
Thursday, 1 July 2010, 15:45 - 17:00, PZ 5

The Republic of Suriname is a former Dutch colony in South America. It
has some 20
different languages, including Amerindian languages, Creole languages,
and a number of
European and Asian languages brought to the country by colonizers and
immigrants. The
official language in Suriname is Dutch and the main lingua franca is Sranan.

Notwithstanding the fact that Dutch is the official language of the
country and the language
of education, many children, especially from the interior districts,
have other home
languages than Dutch and are confronted with Dutch as a language of
instruction only
when they first arrive at school. This potentially hampers their
educational careers. Against
this background, the Ministry of Education in Suriname decided to take
steps towards
developing a language policy for education and asked us to provide
them with empirical
data on multilingualism and education in Suriname on which this policy
could be based.
More specifically the Ministry asked if it would be useful to use
other home languages than
Dutch as languages of instruction.

In order to collect these data we carried out a country wide home
language survey with
22,643 students and 3,785 teachers in primary and secondary education,
asking questions
about home language use, proficiency, choice, dominance and
preference. We furthermore
collected data on the languages that the students and teachers used at
school and on the
teachers’ experiences and opinions regarding multilingualism and education.

In our presentation we will first of all deal with the position of our
research as an example of
research for policy development (not on policy development). After
that we will present
some of our findings from the students’ home language survey and their
relevance for
language policy development. Finally we will go into a possible follow
up of our research as
research on language policy development.

http://www.uvt.nl/faculteiten/fgw/dtc/seminar1-7-10.pdf

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