EXPLORING THE TERRAIN: SCHOOL LANGUAGE CHANGE, CHANGE AGENTRY AND SUSTAINING CHANGE
2.2 Part A: Literature Review
2.2.1 The South African context
2.2.1.1 Historical Overview of Language Policy in Education in South Africa
The historical overview covers the period 1953 (when the Bantu Education Act of 1953 was passed) to the present and focuses specifically on the LOLT. The purpose of the overview is to foreground the policy of mother tongue education entrenched during the period of Bantu education. According to Mahlalela-Thusi & Heugh (2002), the implementation of apartheid in education was accompanied by the extended use of the mother-tongue principle. This vigorous implementation of mother tongue education during the period of Bantu Education resulted in extensive use of African languages as media of instruction accompanied by the publication of textbooks and other learning materials in African languages for subjects across the curriculum including Mathematics and Science. This is significant for the study as a critical facet of the school language change initiatives of the change agents is the use of African languages as LOLTs alongside English.
The passing of the Bantu Education Act in 1953 was a carefully thought through first stage of the implementation of apartheid policy. Prior to 1948, the use of the mother tongue in the primary schools had been extended to between four to six years depending upon the province. Under Bantu Education, mother-tongue instruction was extended for another two years to cover the full eight years of primary schooling after 1955 for African children. For the other race groups in South Africa at the time, one or both of the official languages (English and Afrikaans) were used as medium/s of instruction.
This language policy in education was viewed suspiciously and the government was accused of taking a retrogressive step aimed at a decline in the quality of “native education” (van Zyl 1961). The root of the suspicions about mother-tongue education emerged from the doubt or fear of inadequacy or unsuitability of the mother-tongue serving effectively as a vehicle of instruction. Consequently, the desire to have a command of language/s which helped in establishing wider contacts, which facilitated communication with other language groups and which assisted materially in making a living accelerated the acquisition of English and Afrikaans and their use as languages of
learning and teaching (Smit 1962). Perhaps the strongest condemnation of mother-tongue education was the following:
Language can be a powerful factor in irrigating or dehydrating the intellect, in widening or limiting the horizon, in turning out an educated person or a tribalised philistine. (Mother-tongue education) means enforcement of learning through a vernacular throughout the effective years of a child‟s short life so as to tie him to village and tribe and give him the minimum of bridges to a wider field of knowledge and a modern culture.
(Barnard 1964)
A similar position on mother tongue instruction was adopted by Troup (1976) who emphasized the perceived incapacitating qualities of mother tongue education by stating that mother tongue instruction was imposed on African people by the apartheid government as a means of inculcating tribal consciousness, perpetuating tribal divisions, and reinforcing the gulf between white and black.
The second strategy of a language policy which would support apartheid was accomplished in the giving of official status to these languages. An amendment to the Constitution was enacted in 1963 and provided for legislation to grant official status to the Bantu languages. Dr Verwoerd, Prime Minister at the time, justified the move by arguing that both in education and in the practice of parliamentary institutions the African languages were to be given a chance to develop by being used (Mahlalela-Thusi & Heugh 2002). However, the disenfranchised majority saw this as yet another means of entrenching a “divide and rule” policy. As a result of the resistance to the mother-tongue policy by the early 1970s amendments to the 1953 Bantu Education Act were made in 1979 limiting mother tongue to the first four years of school followed by a switch to English or Afrikaans as a medium of instruction depending on the province. This language policy persisted up until the advent of the new language policy in education in 1997 (DoE 1997) promoting multilingualism.
Hence, for African learners at least we appear to have come almost full circle since 1953 with the strong emphasis once more on mother-tongue education and the advancement of the previously marginalized indigenous languages in education though now mother- tongue education is being encouraged for the right reasons.
While mother-tongue education under Bantu education was heavily criticised, Mahlalela- Thusi & Heugh (2002) through archival research, discovered that during the years of Bantu education, African languages were strongly developed with the publication of various textbooks in African languages for all subjects. The research also uncovered the existence of exhaustive terminology lists in African languages. Contrary to expectations, the content of textbooks so far examined does not indicate a cognitively impoverished curriculum for African languages-speaking children in the primary school years before 1975. According to Mahlalela-Thusi & Heugh (2002), there could be much value in a thorough analysis of both terminology and materials published in the past as this could speed up the process of producing modern and appropriate textbooks for learners today.
These findings have important implications for the study for the following reasons. The study explores attempts at sustaining language change that is sensitive to linguistic heterogeneity in the post-apartheid classroom, and which encourages the use of previously marginalised African languages as subjects and LOLTs. In addition, the study strongly discounts the argument that multilingualism is difficult to pursue in South African education because of poorly developed African languages that cannot be used effectively as LOLTs.
The next part of the review in this section considers research on post-1997 school language policies and practices to establish the response of schools to the post apartheid LiEP which advocates multilingual education.