EXPLORING THE TERRAIN: SCHOOL LANGUAGE CHANGE, CHANGE AGENTRY AND SUSTAINING CHANGE
2.2 Part A: Literature Review
2.2.2 The International Context
2.2.2.2 Other international countries
South Africa‟s contribution to ACALAN is through PRAESA‟s involvement in the ACALAN project. PRAESA‟s involvement is captured in the following vision articulated by Alexander and Bloch (2004:10):
Our vision is to regain a balance where meaning and creativity for all children are the fulcrum of education. Africa is a continent of stories, and we have to ensure that these regain their prominence and influence in various ways, not least as educational bridges between oral and written language in early childhood.
PRAESA, through ACALAN, has embarked on a continent-wide project called Stories across Africa involving the collection and writing of stories in African languages which can become a core body of children‟s literature across the continent. Working in collaboration with publishers, PRAESA is helping to stimulate and promote cultures of reading and writing in African languages by initiating programmes for developing new children‟s literature through writers‟ and illustrators‟ workshops and developing translation skills for children‟s literature among professionals working in indigenous South African languages.
A selective review of the literature on language policy in education and language policy reforms in Africa reveals that there is a resurgence of interest in the African languages with their use as a medium of instruction at least up to the end of the primary school phase and through various initiatives to empower African languages and their speakers.
However, the hegemonic status of English is still apparent in most African countries.
More significantly the sustainability of educational reforms, as in the case of the Ghanaian educational reform, is difficult to maintain as a result of economic factors, negative attitudes towards indigenous African languages and the lack of political commitment to these reforms. The parallels with the South African situation are very apparent and the implications for this study are obvious, viz. cognizance must be taken of the powerful forces of language attitudes and state support in realizing sustainable change in language in education policies and practices that affirm the use of African languages as subjects and LOLTs alongside English.
A selective review of literature in non-African international countries focuses on language maintenance and bi- and multilingual educational programmes aimed at addressing the linguistic diversity of learners and protecting the linguistic rights of minority language communities. A parallel exists between minority languages in this context and African languages in the South African and African context where, although indigenous languages are spoken by the majority, they still enjoy relatively lower status than English. Hence, reviewing programmes that affirm the equal value of and use of minority languages alongside mainstream languages in the international context would be insightful for the implementation of similar programmes to elevate the status of African languages in the South African education system. This in turn would be informative for the study, which contemplates school language change that considers among other initiatives bi- and multilingual teaching/learning strategies that give effect to the underlying principle of additive bi- and multilingualism captured in the LiEP.
The review in this sub-section begins with a brief examination of the campaign by the international language rights movement that vigorously champions the right to mother tongue education and affirms the value of bi- and multilingual education before contemplating the various bi- or multilingual education provisions. The right to mother tongue education for African learners in the study (Indian learners have English as a home language which is the dominant medium of instruction) is the one of the foci of the study as it underscores the need for school language change, which addresses the linguistic diversity of learners in post-apartheid South African schools. It is with this in mind that the campaign by the language rights movement is reviewed.
2.2.2.2.1 Mother Tongue Education: A basic human right
The international language rights movement led by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (2003) argues strongly for added multilingualism, maintenance of linguistic diversity, protecting minority and indigenous languages from big languages that turn into killer languages and
bring about what is termed linguistic genocide, and protecting the right to mother tongue education.
Threatened languages are defined as those that have few users and a weak political status, and especially, if children are no longer learning them, and a parallel is drawn between threatened languages and threatened animals and plants (Skutnabb-Kangas 2003, Harmon 2002, Annamalai 2004). Linguistic diversity is thus linked to biodiversity. According to Annamalai (2004), diversity in nature and culture are integrally related and they are connected with the development of ecosystems and with their sustainability and these have given rise to the concept of bio-cultural diversity. Skutnabb-Kangas (2003) discusses the work of Terralingua, one of the organisations investigating the relationship between linguistic diversity and biodiversity, which shows a high correlation between biodiversity and linguistic diversity in a comparison of 25 countries reflecting the highest degrees of diversity in the world. Maffi et al (1999) suggest that if the long-lasting co- evolution which people have had with their environments from time immemorial is abruptly disrupted, without nature (and people) getting enough time to adjust, we can expect a catastrophe. To illustrate the point, Maffi (1994) uses the example of Mexican youth. Nuances in the knowledge about medicinal plants and their use disappear when indigenous youth in Mexico become bilingual without teaching in and through the medium of their own languages. Linguistic and cultural diversity seem to be decisive mediating variables in sustaining biodiversity itself, and vice versa, for as long as humans inhabit the earth (Skutnabb-Kangas 2003).
According to Skutnabb-Kangas (2003) assimilationalist submersion education where minorities are taught through the medium of dominant languages exclusively and alongside students fluent in the dominant language. This causes mental harm and leads to the minority students using the dominant language with their own children later on, and she advocates instead mother tongue education that she sees as a basic linguistic human right. The contention is that learning new languages should be additive rather than subtractive; it should add to people‟s linguistic repertoire and not at the cost of the diverse mother tongues.
The threat of killer languages that Skutnabb-Kangas (2003) speaks of may be interpreted in the South African situation as the threat that English poses to indigenous languages.
Counteracting this threat would involve efforts to halt language shift and encourage maintenance of African languages beginning with the active promotion of multilingualism in state educational institutions. In this sense the study considers maintenance of African languages through school language change initiatives that affirm the equal value of both English and indigenous South African languages in education.
The next part of the review in this section extends the issue of language maintenance by reviewing programmes used in education in non-African international contexts to promote multilingualism and maintain the existence and use of minority languages in education.
2.2.2.2.2 Bi- and Multilingual Education Programmes in Europe, America and India
To address linguistic diversity and the challenges facing minority linguistic groups in Europe, Canada, USA and India, various bilingual and multilingual education programmes have emerged. In the USA, California, the two-way Bilingual Immersion programme (Ramirez et al 1991, Dolson & Lindholm 1995, Baker 1996) has gained popularity both in USA and Europe. In Canada, the French Immersion programme (Cummins 1981, Swain & Lapkin 1982, Genesse 1984) has influenced language planning and policy issues and theorising around bilingual education worldwide and in Europe, the European Schools Model (Beardsmore 1995) has proved very successful in encouraging multilingualism in Europe. Multilingualism is reflected in India‟s language in education policy, which compels the teaching of a minimum of three languages, known as the
“Three Language Formula” (Annamalai 1995). All three programmes are underpinned by the principle of additive bi- or multilingualism and are therefore primarily concerned with equipping students with high levels of proficiency in both their first and second or additional languages. It is this principle that resonates with what is proposed in this study,
viz. school language change that affirms the equal value of all languages spoken by learners in the school and use of these languages for learning and teaching and offering these languages as subjects.
Before reviewing the bilingual and multilingual education programmes introduced in the preceding paragraph, it would be necessary to distinguish the three types of bilingual programmes prevalent in the USA and Europe. Joshua Fishman (1976) distinguishes three kinds of bilingual outcomes under the headings of maintenance, transitional and enrichment programmes. For Fishman (1976), the goal of a maintenance programme is to ensure that a threatened language used by minority speakers is rendered viable by an education system that helps to keep it alive. Fishman (1991) has developed a theory titled Reversing Language Shift that seeks to revitalise and reclaim threatened languages. A transitional programme is one where bilingual provision is used to enable speakers to move away from the use of one language into the quasi-exclusive use of another (Beardsmore 1995). According to Baker (1996) transitional bilingual education is the most common type of bilingual education in the USA. The aim of transitional bilingual education is assimilationist like submersion education although it differs in some respects from submersion education. With transitional bilingual education language minority students are temporarily allowed to use their home language, often being taught through their home language, until they are thought to be proficient enough in the majority language to cope in mainstream education (Baker 1996). Ramirez and Merino (1990) further distinguish between early exit transitional bilingual education (two years maximum help using the mother tongue) and late exit (40% of classroom teaching in the mother tongue until the 6th grade). An enrichment programme, according to Fishman (1976) is one where a second language does not replace the first, but is added so as to enable the user to function adequately in the second but at no cost to the first. The Canadian Immersion, California Two-way Bilingual Immersion and European Schools Model are all enrichment programmes encouraging additive bi- and multilingualism.
Originally developed by the San Diego City School District in the mid-1970‟s, the California two-way bilingual immersion programme was later elaborated and then
promoted by the California Department of Education beginning in the mid-1980‟s.
Among all the second language, bilingual, multicultural, and foreign language programmes organised in California, the two-way bilingual immersion approach is an optimal approach for the American setting. The approach combines features of full bilingual education for language minority students (largely Spanish-speaking) and early total immersion education for English-speaking students. For Spanish-speaking and English-speaking students, academic instruction is presented in Spanish and they receive English language arts and depending on the particular programme and grade level, portions of their academic instruction in English (Dolson & Lindholm 1995). The programme encompasses four criterial features: (1) Dual language instruction with significant portions of instruction in Spanish; (2) Periods of instruction in one language;
(3) Both native English speakers and native Spanish speakers are participants; (4) Integration of students for most content instruction. The major goals of the programme are that students will develop high levels of proficiency in their first and second languages in an additive bilingual mode, academic performance will be at or above grade level in both languages and students will have high levels of psychosocial competence and positive cross-cultural attitudes (Dolson & Lindholm 1995). An important aspect of the programme according to Dolson & Lindholm (1995) is that the two languages are kept distinct and never mixed during instruction. The reasons are that this improves the quantity and quality of teacher preparation and delivery in Spanish, students receive sustained exposure to Spanish to obtain native speaker levels and to offer Spanish sociocultural and political protection so that English, because of its dominant status, does not encroach in the domains of language use.
The best-known enrichment bilingual programme is the Canadian immersion programme developed for English-speaking Canadians to acquire French. According to Beardsmore (1995) the early total immersion programme is the most popular in Canada and consists of a radical home-school language switch from the day the child enters the first grade of school. English-speaking children have their first contacts with school in French and English is only gradually introduced, as they grow older. Most of the children come from the same majority-language, middle-class background. They feel secure within and
outside the school in the worth of their first language, English, which is one of two official languages and is never denigrated or threatened. At home they are constantly stimulated in the use of the majority language. According to Beardsmore (1995), parents who opt for immersion do so consciously on a voluntary basis and are usually well informed of the implications involved, and being middle-class parents, they are often in a position to provide back-up support for the school‟s efforts and compensate for the lack of English in the initial stages of schooling. Teachers in immersion programmes are all English-French bilinguals who, although they themselves only use French, always react appropriately when a child uses English.
According to Cummins (1995), evaluation of the early immersion programme in Canada showed that by Grade 4 the English spelling of children in the programme was equivalent to peers following a regular English-medium programme. In addition, their French skills developed rapidly such that after a few years it was no longer possible to use the same test to compare them with peers who were taking core French taught as a second language. Despite its success, Cummins (1995) identifies two significant problems with it, viz. students‟ expressive skills in French (both oral and written) are far from native- speaker norms, and the student attrition from the programme due to academic and behavioural problems is very high. Cummins (1995) proposes an adaptation to the programme, which is introducing English language arts at the grade 1 level, and a greater focus on integrating early literacy instruction (in both languages) with students‟
background experience which he argues will entail much more active oral and written language use by students. Cummins‟ (1995) main argument for early introduction of English language arts is that students experiencing difficulty in early literacy development are more likely to benefit from concepts being explained in their first language than in a language which is still very limited in its development, and argues further that intervention is likely to be more successful when both linguistic channels can be mobilized than when only the more restricted channel is used. Cummins (1995) quotes a longitudinal evaluation of his proposed adapted model conducted by the Calgary Roman Catholic Separate School Board. The evaluation revealed that students who received an hour of English from Grade 1 had, by the end of Grade 3, pulled ahead of the
regular immersion students in French reading and writing and were performing equivalently in French oral skills. In addition, their performance in English reading and writing was also superior.
In his review of the European schools programme, Beardsmore (1995) observes that they have been specifically designed as multilingual establishments where more than two languages function as media of instruction. European schools form part of a network of 9 schools situated in 6 different European countries. The schools are collectively controlled by the education authorities of the 12 member states of the European community. On a cultural level the European School programme shows an attempt to integrate children from different national backgrounds into a broader, communal, new identity that will not threaten that of origin. Further significant points, according to Beardsmore (1995), are the notion of linguistic equality and additive bi- and multilingualism. The fundamental principles of the European schools programme as summed up by Beardsmore (1995) are as follows:
All students are led through the same process of transition from instruction through the first language (L1) into that through both the L1 and the second language (L2), The L1 serves as a basis for instruction as competence in the L2 develops but the L1 is never abandoned and transition to the use of the L2 is gradual,
Throughout, the L1 and L2 are taught as subject matter to reinforce grammatical accuracy and lexical precision,
Interaction at peer group level between native and non-native speakers of a given language is strongly promoted,
Teachers are nearly all bilingual in different combinations of languages but always teach through their first language, and
Attempts are made to eliminate strong ethnolinguistic perspectives by fostering a European identity and a cross-cultural view of the world.
Like the French immersion programme, there is strong parental involvement in the European Schools model.
According to Annamalai (1995), the three languages in the “Three Language Formula” of India are the 2 official languages, viz. English and Hindi and any official language spoken in the state (normally the numerically and politically dominant language). When two of the languages are the same any other modern Indian language is included in the formula. The policy does not provide for the mother tongue when it is different from the dominant language of the state. However, in practice, it is learnt in place of the dominant language of the state, called the regional language, the learning of which has recently been made compulsory by the states. Switching to the regional language as medium from a mother tongue of minorities is abrupt, usually at the end of 4 or 5 years of education.
Students exiting the school system at the end of secondary schooling are trilingual in varying degrees of competence in the three languages regardless of the medium of instruction. Annamalai (1995) asserts that the education policy of India promotes multilingualism though not through a method of bilingual education following the universal properties of bilingual education espoused by the European schools model.
However, a concern that Annamalai (1995) sounds out is that with increasing preference for English, bilingualism involving English may have an edge over other languages and it may even lead to imbalanced multilingualism with mother tongues being restricted to the home domain.
A selective review of the literature on language policy research and research on bi- and multilingual education in the non-African context reveals three key findings of significance to this study. These are the need for strong parental involvement in and support of any school language change initiative for it to succeed as in the case of the French immersion and European schools programme, the strong emphasis on additive bi- and multilingualism in practice and not simply espoused as in all the programmes reviewed, and the threat of English hegemony despite the practice of multilingualism, especially in prior British colonies like India. The review of the bi- or multilingual programmes in this sub-section is instructive for the South African context and by implication for this study as it underscores the value of enrichment bilingual programmes over early exit transitional models. Currently in South Africa the early exit model