ISSUES IN THE NATIONAL AND EDUCATION LANGUAGE POLICIES
7.6 Examples of parental resistance to the use of mother tongues in early education
Some parents' views are presented here to show their resistance to the use of mother tongues in the debate on mother tongue instruction in early education. A member of one of the opposition parties, the social Democratic Party, said:
it does not require research to know that a child taught in English will learn • better than a' child taught inthe vernacular.
Eston Kakhome, in The Nation, May, 24, 1996.
In the same edition of the paper, a lawyer, StanleyNg'ombe, said:
Let's face it, I think there is a problem here. May be the Ministry of Education should put emphasis on English which is the basis of everything.
One local parent observed that
these leaders send their children to private schools where English from kindergarten.
they learn
Margaret Nawela,The Nation, 26 May 1996.
Others still expressed their reservations on the use of mother tongues, pointing the limited vocabulary in handling topics in science, etc. One parent queried:
I want to know ifthere are equivalents of words like atoms and and radioactivityinSena, Yao, Lomwe, Turnbuka etc.
Yotarnu Kasakula, The Nation, 26 August, 1996.
Some felt that the power of English is so strong that it carmot be done away with, because the country relies on Western aid:
As long as we remain dependent on the West for our bread and butter, the idea of vernacular teaching is a non-starter
Adamson Muula, The Nation,28 August 1996.
All the above sentiments clearly lack the psycholinguistic knowledge on the advantages of mother tongues in the child's cognitive development, concept formation and knowledge acquisition at an early age. These ideas are not based on beliefs which have not been scientifically evaluated. These parents' attitudes are the result of the indoctrination by the former president's attitudes and leanings towards English at the expense of local languages. When neighbouring Tanzania had kiSwahili as a medium of instruction in schools, Banda said:
Some do not want English at all. Next door, they are saying Swahili. For Malawi, I do notthink we can do away with English. I cannot even set a time limit.
Banda, 1968,S.
The central idea, of course, is not one of doing away with English, but to provide learners with a sound grounding for further learning from a pedagogical perspective. This then hasbecome one of the major obstacles towards the development of African languages as instructional media, because both parents and learners share similar beliefs and attitudes towards Africa languages.
The truth is that local languages and English occupy different, but complementary functions. The conceptual basis here is the social organisation of a community that determines the domain each takes (Appel and Muysken, 1987). According to this study, when two speakers use two different languages they will rarely use both languages in all circumstances. This position is similar to that of sociolinguists such as Fishman (1968) in his study of Puerto Ricans in New York. The point of departure for Fishman was the question: who speaks what language to whom and when? He identified three factors that are involved in language choice: group membership, situation and topic. Using Fishman's analysis we observe that local languages are mostly used in the home in social gatherings, religious matters, when children play among themselves, in intimate personal matters, in watching football, etc. (Moyo, 1996, 2000). Local languages dominate our private domain; English on the other hand, is used in intra-communication in the workplace, and in inter-communication and in socialisation with people of different ethnolinguistic backgrounds.
In learning and teaching contexts, however, it has to be recognised that the language in which a childhasproficiency is the most profitable in knowledge acquisition. Regardless of whether English is used in H (high) or formal domains and local languages in L (low) domains in the Malawian context, when it comes to the development of all languages, local languages must be given the attention so that they are capable of maximum utilisation. There istherefore a need for an attitude change on the part of the general
public and some authorities who are charged with the responsibility of developing local languages and also the implementation of the revised 1996 language policy in education and in the national life.
In teaching and learning contexts, if learners fail to express cognitively-demanding concepts and their deepest emotions in their indigenous languages, it might become extremely difficult for them to express these feelings in an unfamiliar language. Speakers must have labels for their thoughts, feelings and abstract issues in their mother tongue to be able to trigger them when they speak in English unlike the semilingual condition (Mahlalela-Thusi, 1999:28).
As a result of both the neglect of the development of indigenous languages and the 'straight for English' policy in some private schools in Malawi, semilingualism has evolved considerably. Appel and Muysken (1987) consider this ' a linguistic malaise.' The concept refers to someone who speaks two languages but both at a lower level than monolingual speakers. The danger here is that the majority of learners (see Williams, 1996) end up with learners who have neither proficiency nor competence in either of the languages - their mother tongue and English, as a result of insufficient grounding in the mother tongue first. The argument therefore is to develop the mother tongue to play a complementary role and not a subordinate role to English in both education and in the world outside classroom.