The constitution also demands language proficiency for those aspiring to positions of deputy minister, minister, the vice presidency and the presidency.
3.8 Language-in-education policy: English-Chichewa diglossia
Department of Language and Communication Studies (DLCS) has the mandate to offer English for Specific Purposes (ESP) to all faculties of the institution to cater for students' specific needs (Kamwendo, 1997:04).
Concern has been expressed about the declining levels of English by external examiners.
The Department of Language and Communication Studies was intended to improve the faIling standards in students' competence in English. However, in a recent shift in the university policy, English will no longer be a university entrance requirement (Kamwendo 1997:04).
Students will still be admitted to university if they obtain higher grades in the subjects they wish to specialise in. Some academics argue that this new policy will further lead to a lowering of standards in English. Others argue that failure in English for students who would use it only as a medium of instruction should not preclude leamers from obtaining university education.
During the Banda regime (1964-1994), English received considerable support from the presidency. As we have observed in Mpande's (1996) description, the man loved and adored everything English and European. His language policy particularly favoured English above Chicliewa in education and in the national life.
When the University of Malawi was established in 1965 Banda expressed his dissatisfaction with the way English was being taught, and this dissatisfaction resurfaced in 1972 at a conference which aimed at reviewing Malawi's education system. At this conference Banda expressed his dismay at the quality of English used by secondary school pupils, some of whom he said wrote letters to him (Kamwendo, 1997:04). He lamented:
This is simply because there is no teaching, no grammar, no composition. Boys and girls are not taught what is a word; what is a phrase; what is a clause....they are not taught to punctuate.
(Banda, 1972:05)
He argued that being the head of state did not mean that he should have confined himself to politics and matters of state alone. He contended that he was also interested in issues such as language:
I am not just a Head of State...I consider myself more than that. This is why I am concerned about Chichewa, how it is spoken by my people; English; how it is spoken by my people.
(Banda 1975:01)
His view was that:
A person must have basic principles of grammar taught to him ....I was taught grammar and I want to see that ... grammar must be taught properly.
(Banda, 1975:06-07)
We have mentioned earlier that through-out his presidency Banda spoke in English whether it was at a gathering of international delegates or at a political mass raIly at grassroots level. When he returned to Malawi after a reported absence of some 45 years, he was fluent in Latin but had forgotten his native Chichewa (McGreal, 1993:24-25 in Mphande, 1996:86). Here an interpreter was always at hand. We have also mentioned
,
that he often took it upon himself to school his audiences in what he considered to be correct English. At one occasion, he said 'In the United States, you hear people say, 'them things us doing'. But even there, it is not acceptable English' (Banda, 1975:16).
In his student days as a research assistant for Watkins, Banda developed an interest in historical linguistics. It is perhaps this experience that led him to know that English extensively borrowed form Latin and Greek. He believed that knowledge of these two
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classical languages was crucial to one's acquisition of a good command of English. He maintained that 'no one is truly educated without knowledge of Latin and Greek, without the knowledge of the classical world' (Banda, 1975:11)
Itis perhaps this love for the classical languages and knowledge that made him set up a grammar school, the Kamuzu Academy, which has been referred to as the Eaton of Africa. When he set up the academy Banda insisted that it was designed to demonstrate the overarching importance of classical education to the Malawian youth. During his presidency this institution spent about five million dollars (US) a year, an avereage of
$12000 per pupil per year. This represented 50 per cent of the national education budget.
Inthe rest of the country an average of $14 was spent on a pupil per year. Banda's idea was that the academy was built with the expressed intention of furthering European classical education, and he decreed that anyone who did not know Latin, Greek and ancient History could not teach at the school. Besides, not a single indigenous language, including Chichewa, the national language, was taught at the school. Malawians were essentially 'denied the opportunity to teach at the academy, being defined as not qualified in light of the deficiency in Latin and Greek.' (Matiki 1998:19). At that time the school had over thirty European teachers most of whom were British. This was in spite of the fact that Malawians particularly university staff were more qualified than the staff at the academy.
Inexpoundinghislove for classical languages and ancient history, Banda, as Chancellor of the University, exerted pressure on the university to establish a Classics Department.
He rebuked: 'How can you people call yourselves a real university if you don't have a Department of Classics?' (Alexandra,1951:58). The Department of Classics was thus formed for political, rather than academic, reasons.
The British principal of the academy, Anthony Cooke, referred to Banda in flatteringly reverential terms -" H.E. (His Excellency) and 'founder'- and described him 'as a total protagonist of Western culture' who believed that a small African country such as Malawi .could only acquire respect if it related. to Western countries (McGeal 1993 in Mphande, 1996). One is bound to ask, 'Why respect for an African country with its own indigenous languages and cultures be earned by that country only through the acquisition of classical values rather than its own, even if it adopted a colonial language as one of its official languages?' A fair account of
evidence suggests that students resented this skewed education. In order to avoid the ordeal of taking Latin, Greek and Ancient History throughout their school life at the academy, and to ensure that they learnt something closer to their realities, they resorted to obtaining' a 'C' and not a 'B' grade at the Ordinary Level examinations. This meant that they could not be forced to take that subject at 'A' Level. There is also evidence to suggest that learners did not 'know much of Malawi history. They keep Africa away from us'. (Mphande, 1996:87)
Apart from the emphasis on Greek, Latin and Ancient History learners were taught translation styles in their most archaic form, a range of classical literary texts which included Oxid's Ars Amatoria andMetamorphoses, and also the articulations about Greco-Roman civilisation from Plutarch. The issue here is that instead of allowing learners to identify themselves with their indigenous languages by studying them, even as subjects in secondary school, along with their cultures, they were made to further alienate them from their own local world. What was inculcated was the view that the attainment of order and unity in the world could come only through the imperial agency of Rome. To this end, the emphasis on Greece and Rome was, in effect, a canonical act of retreat into the past. This is because even if we consider the Western culture that is so greatly admired and advocated, the texts that were offered in this school did not include enlightened writers such as Bertolt Brecht or Leo Tolstoy. Banda's zeal and love for these languages is a little perplexing. It could not be understood why one would spend so much time learning to speak a dead language, at least in speech, such as Latin, which he was reported to have spoken fluently. The French ambassador reported thus of him: 'His Excellency, Ngwazi Dr H. Kamuzu Banda was a leading advocate of French as a modem language, as well as Greek and Latin from which French is derived.'(Daily Times, I May 1990).
With regard to the language-in-education policy, where Malawi inherited the English tradition in schools and in higher education, apart from the president's respect for the classical languages it is clear that English now enjoys a higher status in
Malawi than all other languages. Itperforms all other functions that Bernstein (1971) contends a language should perform, viz, the instrumental, regulative, interpersonal and imaginative or innovative. Ngugi (1986) has referred to the role and function of English in the British colonial world as 'the official vehicle and the magic formula to colonial e1itedom'. This has continued in post-colonial Malawi, and practically in all other British colonies. For his native land, Kenya, Ngugi observes the following attitude toward English in colonial times which hardly makes a difference when applied to Malawi with regard to education language policy that Banda implemented:
Any achievement in spoken or written English was highly rewarded: prizes, prestige, applause; the ticket to higher realms. English became the measure of intelligence and ability in the arts, sciences and all other branches of learning. English became the main determinant of a child's progress up to the ladder of formal education.
(Ngugi,1986:12)
Ngugi (1986:190) again describes such an attitude to a colonial language, English and others added to it, as a 'more telling example of hatred of what is national and a servile worship of what is foreign even though dead.'
Banda's attitude to what is national can be seen through the difference in the amounts of money he spent on the academy as opposed to what was spent in the ordinary schools quoted above. While the academy has grand facilities, the national schools receive poor facilities: poor infrastructure, lack of textbooks and unqualified or ill-qualified teachers. Learners at the academy sit for the British'0' and 'A' level examinations, while those in the national school sit for the local Malawi School
• Certificate Examination (MSCE). Learners from these two examining' bodies are easily admitted into British universities, although the academy has erroneously argued that their learners would easily be admitted in the UK with British qualifications.
This illustrates that Banda's language policy, his attitude and the legacy of the education policies the country has inherited have all been grossly ill-conceived. It is an accepted observation that the establishments of mission schools such as the Livingstonia and Blantyre missions, among others, which allowed their educated converts to develop and write in their indigenous languages resulted in some scholarly works of note. However, since higher education thwarted the development of indigenous languages and largely promoted English and others, the scholarly nature of literature, for example, was essentially an imitation of English literary traditions that seemed calculated to transform educated Malawians into Black Wordsworths, black Shakespeares or black Elliots. Ken Lipenga (in Lindfors 1989) haspointed out that the English Department at Chancellor College, University of Malawi, had a 'compulsory reading list' which was calculated to ensure that 'Even after political independence, a certain cultural dependence continues, perpetuating colonialism.' He also refers to the impact of 'Shakespeare and the English masters' as being very tremendous on the Malawian literature:
Previously many of us tended to look at literature as something exotic because it was associated with archaic languages and expressions that made no sense at all but which you had to memorize anyway. What happened was that literature, because the way it was presented, it tended to emphasize those foreign elements, was really an oddity that appealed to only a small minority of the students.
(interview with Ken Lipenga in Lindfors, 1989)