EXPLORING THE TERRAIN: SCHOOL LANGUAGE CHANGE, CHANGE AGENTRY AND SUSTAINING CHANGE
2.2 Part A: Literature Review
2.2.1 The South African context
2.2.1.3 Language Perceptions disabling Implementation of the LiEP
suicide” by actively pursuing the development and use of African languages in the most powerful domains of society.
A selective review of research examining post 1997 school language policies and practices and factors impacting on them revealed that limited implementation of the LiEP was due mainly to the entrenchment of the power of English through the pursuit of an English-only position which endorsed the value of English over African languages.
Linked to this was the proliferation of the myth that the majority of African parents preferred English over the mother tongue for their children when they preferred not either/or but both, and this position was exacerbated by the lack of political will in monitoring and supporting the implementation of multilingual education in schools thereby ignoring the real needs of parents. This position, which is reflective of negative attitudes and perceptions of African languages, is significant to this study which explores initiatives to transform school language policies and practices. Such transformation involves, among other things, transforming language attitudes, engendering acceptance of the equal value of all official languages in South Africa and elevating the status and encouraging the increasing use of previously marginalised African languages in education in South Africa.
The next part of the review in this section considers more deeply the role of language perceptions and attitudes in impeding school language change.
Schmied‟s (1991) findings on the influence of language attitudes in stifling the success of language policy change in African education.
Heugh (2002) argues that one of the reasons for the lack of change in school language policy and practice is the existence of a range of myths about bi- and multilingual education, which she systematically debunks. The myths are: (1) There is no or not enough indigenous South African research in the area of languages in education. She counters this by quoting a large body of research which has been conducted in South Africa which points conclusively to the disastrous effects of attempting to teach mainly through English and research which confirms the value of pursuing bilingual education.
Among the research quoted is a large scale survey of 19 733 learners conducted by the Director of the National Bureau for Educational and Social Research, EG Malherbe, in 1938, on the extent of bilingualism in schools which is considered today by leading applied linguists and sociolinguists internationally (among them Joshua Fishman and Jim Cummins) as the most authoritative and comprehensive study of the relationship between education and bilingualism at the time. (2) Parents want straight for English or English only. This myth is countered by arguing that while African parents have attached high value to English, they attach an equally high value to the indigenous languages. Heugh (2002) quotes two surveys which confirm this. The first survey was conducted by The Department of Education and Training in 1992 that offered parents a choice of language medium. Of the 67% of the schools which returned voting records, 22% of the parents opted for Straight for English, 54% opted for Gradual transfer to English, 13,4% opted for Sudden transfer to English and only 7,5% voted to retain the status quo. Hence the majority chose the option giving greatest percentage of time to the mother tongue within the various bilingual options. The second survey is the PANSALB survey (2000) cited earlier. (3) English is the only language which has the capacity to deliver quality education to the majority; African languages do not or cannot. Heugh (2002) counters this myth by referring to the first period of Bantu Education with eight years of mother- tongue instruction and textbooks and terminology available in African languages raised earlier in this section of the review. Heugh (2002) contends that the terminology has not vanished but continues and is constantly adapted in the code-switching discourse of most
classrooms today. During the first phase of Bantu Education (1953 – 76), Heugh (2002) found that the matriculation pass rate steadily improved which she attributes to an educationally enabling language in education policy, which purely by accident happened to coincide with other disabling interests of apartheid education. (4) Many South African children do not have a mother tongue and therefore do not need mother-tongue education. The argument supporting this myth is that African children speak an amalgam of Southern African languages; hence they do not have a single mother tongue (Taylor and Vinjevold 1999). Heugh (2002) counters this myth by asserting that children of Africa and India are usually bilingual and often multilingual. These children, in urban settings, tend to employ code-switching and code-mixing as informal communicative devices to negotiate their multilingual neighbourhoods. Heugh (2002) contends that this does not mean that they do not have a sufficient proficiency in at least one language which would be the appropriate language for reading and writing in their community. She asserts that the term mother tongue does not exclude bilingual or multilingual dimensions, and quotes Wolff (2000) who asserts that multilingualism is “an important resource to be utilised as widely as possible since this draws on the children‟s prior experience, their established abilities, and relates directly to their linguistic, social and, cultural environments.” (5) Bilingual or multilingual education is too expensive and we have only one option: English only (or mainly). Heugh (2002) contends that there are increased costs but not significant where there are print-runs. She compares this with the significantly higher cost of an English-mainly approach requiring extensive in-service teacher education to raise existing proficiencies in English to L1 levels for up to 95% of teachers and the cost of new textbooks carefully written by second language experts across the curriculum to adjust the English language levels. Heugh (2002) argues that the development and printing costs of bilingual teaching materials and books as well as accompanying teacher training are not as costly as expected. This is confirmed by research (Vawda 1999) carried out for the World Bank.
Heugh‟s (2002) observations concur with Schmied‟s (1991) contention of the existence of arguments discouraging mother tongue instruction in African languages. Schiemd (1991) cites four arguments presented by the proponents of the straight for English
approach. The first argument, viz. the high cost advantage is similar to Heugh‟s myth 5.
The second argument is the anti-tribal argument that contends that the selection of an African language would threaten unity of the nation state and that English is the only ethnically neutral language. The third argument is the technological argument which purports that as modern terminology in African languages is still being developed, especially in the scientific and technical fields, it is impossible to use these languages now or in the near future as mediums of instruction for Mathematics and science subjects at least. The fourth argument is the international communication argument that presents the unique status of English as a language of world-wide communication.
It is arguments like these and flawed language perceptions exposed by Heugh (2002) about the value of a straight for English approach over mother tongue instruction that still persist and act as deterrents to any real attempt to address linguistic diversity in post apartheid classrooms.
The review in this part privileges the work of Kathleen Heugh as she has long championed the cause of multilingual education in South Africa, strongly asserted the need for using the previously marginalised African languages for instructional purposes and condemned the lack of political will to translate the post-apartheid LiEP into practice.
Her research endeavours as well as Neville Alexander‟s in the field of multilingual education are cited extensively in this thesis as their work is instructive for this study that explores school language change which addresses the imperative of catering for the linguistic needs of learners in multilingual classrooms.
Despite the lack of real attempts in public schools to implement the LiEP evidenced in the review thus far, the literature does reveal attempts by language NGOs to initiate the process by experimenting with multilingual educational programmes. These are reviewed in the next part of this section.