ISSUES IN THE NATIONAL AND EDUCATION LANGUAGE POLICIES
7.10 The analysis of policies
7.10.4 Textbook writing and materials development in the promotion of indigenous languages
which would give it more ethos. It also needs to build a national managerial and leadership capacity towards a multilingual society.
This aspect is important as there would be key implementers of the educational reform who would engage with existing educational teaching and learning problems and practices. These implementers would thus need to break the formal conservative and often bureaucratic attitudes to enable them use their discretion to modify policies when necessary (de Clercq, 1997). Once the policy reforms can build a capacity of educators, a path would then be set towards redressing the current impasse.
So far the education leadership which also includes the ruling politicians, has turned a deaf ear to these issues. Thishas resulted in the lack of decisive direction and inappropriate strategic intellectual skills and knowledge in the implementation of the so-called revised 1996 policy. If policy formulation and reforms are to bemore effective in creating conditions beneficial to all, there is a need to improve its role on many fronts. Itwill need to conceptualise adequately the policy problem and develop strategic priorities, plans and programmes.
Furthermore, it will need to be more rooted in the realities of the Malawian situation, and make more effective strategies which would have to include some form of backward mapping as an implementation approach, discussed above. This is another aspect of evaluation and of policy development.
7.10.4 Textbook writing and materials developmentinthe promotion of indigenous
English or indeed in indigenous languages has treaded a thorny path as a result of the 1969 Censorship and Control Entertainment Act, which established the Censorship Board. This forbade writing in languages that were banned and thus not official. This also censored whatever was written in the recognised official languages, English and Chichewa,
It is important therefore to discuss the development of textbooks and other material in line with the need to reform current policies and accommodate other languages to complement English particularly in the teaching and learning contexts.
If local languages are to complement English as instructional languages, they will need to develop their textbooks and other materials to be on a par with texts and other materials used in English. They will need to be rewritten in order to engage learners in higher order thinking. Within these indigenous languages, the textbooks that have to be developed will need to focus on how learners can think in abstract terms in Chiyao, Chinyanja and Chitumbuka, for example.
It cannot be disputed that a considerable amount of time that learners spend in ,
doing their homework is spent with text materials (Reynolds, 1997, in Mahlalela- Thusi, 1999). In view of the absence of any meaningful textbooks for learners, particularly given the history of a total ban on all other local languages in any form of written works, there is a need for such textbooks and other forms of learning materials. This will place textbooks in a unique position of authority to augment a teacher's lessons.
There are a-number of teachers in Malawi who do not have expertise in the content subjects that they teach. Different materials in the viable local languages and textbooks will thus need to be developed. These will generate interest in languages that learners are familiar with and also be expedient to use; after all most teachers typically have less capacity or confidence to venture beyond safe
boundaries of the printed word. Good textbooks will also enable learners to think and explore beyond what is in the book.
In the development and production of teaching and learning materials, they will need to follow communicative lines that include group work, pair work and projects that will engage learners and generate interaction. In this way learners will develop vocabulary and thinking skills in given languages and thus be enabled to use languages in action.In this light textbooks undoubtedly become the lifeblood of the education system.
Apart from this, textbook writing and the development of relevant teaching and learning materials being advocated here should also help to meet the learners' perceived needs in this age. Along with this students' textbooks should also have the expected academic rigour and not lack in literary or linguistic merit. Two views of texts exist: the 'deficiency' view and the 'difference' view. Basically the former argues that there is a need for materials to save learners from teachers' deficiencies. There are teachers who tend to think that the syllabus is well- covered and the exercises well thought out. Such teachers might therefore be tempted to think that they do not need published teaching material. On the other hand,there are teacher-proof materials, which even deficient teachers would do well with (Allwright, 1981,inMahlalela-Thusi,1999).
Depending on the teacher, some materials would reduce the teacher to mere classroom managers, whereas others would develop their expertise that would be needed for classroom activities. Textbooks and other teaching and learning materials to be developed should therefore not tend to be conservative but liberatory.
In the colonial times, a considerable number of textbooks and other materials tended to serve state policies of making learners mere functionaries of the state.
These new textbooks will need to make a paradigm shift to become agents for
cultural and ideological transformation of the individual learner and of his society.
Most of the textbooks we see from the old times were designed to control learners direction of thought processes and placed boundaries on knowledge acquisition.
The aim was thus to dwarf the minds of learners by conditioning them to servitude as Kallaway (1984) observed with regard to Bantu education among Blacks, particularly in South Africa In other colonial territories such as Malawi too, a number of texts had similar motives.
The texts being advocated here, therefore, should not be ideologically censured but contain provocative intellectual ideas. Because of the low status assigned to indigenous languages, they will need this development and be in step with the needs of the modern times. The issues to be covered in these texts should affect all in bothruraI and urban areas to appeal to youthful readers. Furthermore, they should reflect the sociocultural values of the different Malawian communities. For example, one such text that has constantly featured on the secondary school syllabus is Kukula ndi Mwambo (Growing up with Customs and Traditions). This is an educative book on cultural and moral upbringing of the youth, but it specifically deals with the Chewa culture. Similar textbooks could be written in other languages that reflect the cultures of their respective communities. This
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would contribute tremendously to the national cultural heritage where learners could learn to read about other cultural beliefs and customs, and thus grow up with a "vide knowledge of how Malawian societies are governed by their beliefs and customs.As the analogy goes, forthirty years the entire nation has only been allowed to eat only a quarter of the orange with the rest of it denied by government decree. This may be considered as an unequal sharing of the independence cake. The language too will need not to be too archaic in portraying the historical past; it should be timeless enough to spur readers to read on.
Furthermore, these materials will need to bear in mind an important aspect, which is the cognitive and affective aspect that most books in local languages lack.
Textbook writers will need to bear in mind the paradigm shift referred to in the
previous paragraph with regard to content and methodology that is used in the books. These texts will need to transform to function in the modem social, economic and political contexts to enable learners to read the present world through their own languages and demonstrate a critical language awareness approach with regard to mother tongue usage. Apart from aiming at cognitive and affective capacities, the meaningful study of indigenous languages will thus mean that the study of language must ensure the relationship between a language and reality, regardless of whether the subject is religion, sports, geography, history or politics. Thiswillenable learners to judge the value of their perceptions of other languages. Learners will in this way be given the opportunity to develop abstract thinking and a democratic intellectual freedom within the realm of local languages and express things as they perceive them without inhibitions. They should offer responses from both sides of the coin, as it were, from such texts and not be one-track-minded. This is indeed necessary if society has to change and modify itself to meet unforeseen threats, problems and opportunities. It will further go a long way toward facilitating the notion of transfer of skills from an indigenous language into a second language, in this case, English, as texts from both languages will be pitched at similar levels academically. Besides, in terms of learners' development, this will expose them to the functions of the left and right sides of the brain: the left hemisphere focuses on verbal and factual content such as names and the analysis of ideas - logically, whereas the right focuses on mysterious aspects such as the arts. The developed texts will thus need to accommodate visual literacy and such aspects as drawing, where learners can engage critically with the arts, just as books in the second language, English, do.
A project in the wTiting of books here in local languages, will need to be
• collaborative between writers of indigenous languages and those of English textbooks, so that writers share ideas in content and linguistic approaches. This again becomes one aspect that national educators will need to liaise with their regional and district counterparts for the good of the entire education system.
7.10.5 The use of local languages in mass communication
In the top-down and bottom-up approaches in language policy formulation, the central idea is to reach people at all levels. For the masses on the ground this would be in programmes relating to health, agriculture, etc., that would fulfil their lives. However, this means that appropriate languages would need to be employed in the various communities.
For example, health extension services in the Ministry of Health would make their input using viable local languages in health education programmes to reach the targeted communities in rural areas. Along with this, the publication of specific booklets and magazines need not be in Chinyanja as in the present system in Malawi; they should be in the language of the locality. Similarly in programmes about the prevention of diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, appropriate local languages would be chosen to reach the targeted communities.
Radio broadcasts too will need to use specific languages that are understood by the targeted communities.
Consideration should be given to the production of literature - of pamphlets, posters and leaflets - in languages that are intelligible and understood in various rural communities, bearing in mind that 90% of Malawi's population is rural.
UNESCO reports of there being 2379 radio receivers in Malawi (Hutchenson, 1996). Kishindo (1994) observes that only one fifth of the total population has access to radios.
Officials from the Ministries of Agriculture and Health as well as from other agencies, too, would need to liaise with policy officials to use viable languages to reach the bulk of therural population. Thus local languages will not be restricted to private life as mere languages of ethnic identities; they should be recognised for the crucial role they play in the national development at various levels as languages of instruction, communication in agricultural, health and homecraft activities that affect peoples' lives inrural areas. Ina country with a high level of
illiterac(estimated at over 60% (Osman, 1994)) it cannot be assumed that the only communication used by the government in English and Chinyanja on the radio and in print media readily reaches the bulk of rural communities. The proposal made here therefore needs to be interpreted as suggesting a supplement to the current language policy practice, which is exclusive. Since language also 'manifests the individuality of a people's identity' (Kishindo, 1994:144), rural people will also feel a sense of identity within the national framework if they are reached through their own languages.