Education, Part 9
Language,
Politics and Education
“The ANC is
committed to the development of indigenous languages. We call on our government
to prepare for the introduction of the teaching of our indigenous languages by
2014.”
ANC January 8th Statement, 2013
South Africa has 11 official
languages, and these are not the only languages spoken, read and written in, in
our country.
The latest South African
legislation having to do with languages is the Use of Official
Languages Act, 2012, gazetted on 1 October 2012.
South Africa has a Pan South African Languages Board, and there
is a separate institution known as Kha Ri Gude
Literacy Campaign, whose several objectives include the teaching of
mother-tongue literacy, basic numeracy, and oral English to “adults who missed out on their
schooling” .
What is the concern of the
Communist University in relation to languages? What would be the matters to
discuss, about languages, in Communist University study circles, political
schools and e-mail forums?
These questions must remain
open, but we can attempt some provisional answers.
Language in the Communist University
The Communist University has
its own language policy. It is that participants may use any language of their
choice. It is not the responsibility of the speaker or the writer to translate
his or her output.
Of course, this may mean that
less people read or hear what the contributor is saying. That is something that
contributors have to keep in mind and make choices about.
But in principle, we prefer
that comrades use their first language, even though, in practice, most of the
time they use English. We prefer that comrades use their first language because
if they do not, then the spreading of our political dialogue will only reach as
far as the boundaries of the English-speaking part of the population.
The Communist University
wants to break through that barrier. Our objective is dialogue. The Communist
University’s first and main necessity, therefore, is to foster reading and
writing, and to adopt a method that is most conducive to the development of
reading and writing habits among the participants.
There are other skills of
communication, and we will set aside a full course called Agitprop that will
cover song, graphic design, layout, clothing, and all kinds of means of
expression. But here we are dealing with verbal communication, and from the
point of view of language.
Dictionaries
This will involve the
development of dictionaries in all of the official languages that do not have
them, which are all nine of the African official languages (isiNdebele,
isiXhosa, isiZulu, seSotho sa Lebowa, siSwati, Tshivenda, and Xitsonga) of
South Africa. Such a project could be assisted by the use of Wiktionary, a collaborative
project for the development of language dictionaries (not translation
dictionaries. An example is the “Wikamusi
ya Kiswahili”, which contains 13,780 Kiswahili words, defined in
Kiswahili. Every language needs a dictionary in the language itself. Every
language needs a literature, composed and published in the language. Every
language needs production of new literature in the language.
Language in School
The institution of 11
“official” languages in South Africa, sanctified by the Constitution, is as far
as we know based on “human rights” precepts. Consequently, because human rights
are passive, what has been done so far has not been very effective in terms of
bringing the languages to life.
The teaching of children in
the mother-tongue that they have from home when they enter school for the first
time may be a human right. But if so, then it is not yet being well observed in
South Africa. Motivation for change in this regard comes not from “human
rights” but from the relatively poor rate of success in attempting to educate
people in languages (English or Afrikaans) that they did not learn in the home
and therefore do not, in the beginning of their schooling, know.
Imposing on young children
the stress of attempting, at a very young age, to learn in language that they
do not understand and have not yet been taught, is a cruelty and of course, it
is not successful. On average, children who are presented with this hurdle, do
not advance as fast as children who are welcomed into the formal education
system in their own language.
Broader Political Considerations in relation to
language
Politics, from the communist
point of view, is the development of people, this being a social process that
to happen properly must involve all. The National Democratic Revolution, to
succeed and to complete its historic project, must organise the entire country
into a communication, and a constant dialogue.
To do so by imposing, whether
by design or by default, one single language, is something we as the SACP do
not support, no matter what may have been thought in the past about nations
needing to have a single, common language.
Translation
It follows that the matter of
translation must be approached with care. It will not do to have the two former
colonial languages, or more likely only one of them (English) being used as the
bridge for translation between the speakers of indigenous languages. Such a
situation will carry too much of a danger that the English language, which is
enormously larger in vocabulary and literature than the South African
indigenous languages are, will cease from being a medium, and will instead become
a dominant source.
The problem of translation is
one of serving a culture that is expressed in multiple languages. This is a
different project from the colonial translation project, which had the aim of
dominating the indigenous language-systems, taking ownership of them, and
making a bridge by which all of the mother-tongue intellectuals could enter and
dwell within the realm of the colonial lingua
franca.
This distinction has to be
asserted politically. Once accepted, it has technological implications which
also have to be asserted. If not, then the gains won politically will be
smuggled away in the technological execution.
Priority has to be given to
the creation of new indigenous-language literature, including a first dictionary,
in each language.
Update
Since this item was composed
and first published in early 2013, the CU has created a full course on languages.
This introduction has been
re-edited, and a text has been found that will serve to codify the questions of
language in relation to education. This new text is an article (attached) by
Khethiwe Marais, who is a linguist, translator and language expert, currently
at UNISA. Her article covers what is interesting to us about language when it
comes to education, and the bind that we are in, that causes us to make a
disadvantage out of a potential multilingual advantage. Marais points out that
the dominance of English, with the advantages that it promises (but does not
necessarily fulfil), makes parents into a conservative lobby within the
education system.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Multilingualism
and Democracy, Khethiwe Marais, 2014
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