Mother Tongue in Education:The African Experience

Mohamed Chtatou (Ph.D),International Education Consultant,

Rabat, Morocco

IntroductionThe long spell of colonial rule in Africa, might have,

temporarily, solved the problem of communication between Africancountries themselves, on the one hand, and these countries and therest of the world, on the other. However, this created a complexlinguistic situation on the ground that African governments have,since, been unable to solve. And as a result, national educationalsystems are constantly on the limp and need urgently to be revamped,but the burning question is: how?

Africa is home to thousands of languages and idioms. Thesenumerous languages can, tentatively, be classified in the followingmanner:

1- Tribal language : an autochthonous idiom spoken by themembers of a given tribe only. Unfortunately such languagesare in imminent danger of extinction.

2- Community language : a native language used by several tribesin a given geographical area.

3- National language : a native language or languages usedwithin a given country for communication and culturalpurposes.

4- Trans-national language : a native language or languages usedin more than one country, such as Pular, Swahili, Wolof,etc.

5- Official language : a foreign language or languages imposedby colonial powers as a lingua-franca for use inadministration, business circles, trade and schools: such asFrench, English, Portuguese, etc.

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It is a known fact that the issue of mother tongue1 ineducation in Africa is saddled with pitfalls and drawbacks, even ifmany African countries have, seemingly, devised waterproofstrategies to promote the use of such native languages in schoolcurriculum. And as if the actual situation of mother tongues is notcomplex and intricate enough, globalisation is adding more salt toinjury by insidiously pressuring people, through the magic of ICT,to drop altogether their “useless” native languages as well as somecolonial languages for the English language.

The present paper will attempt to shed light on and discuss thesituation of mother tongues in the African educational systems fromsuch angles as:

- Establishment of true national curricula;- Textbooks;- Teacher training;- Language policy;- Literacy, etc.

and aim at painting the true picture of the situation both in someNorth African and Sub-Saharan countries that were colonised byFrance the last century, given, somewhat, that the colonialeducational legacy is similar.

Omnipotence of colonial legacyThe worst thing about French colonialism is not so much its

pronounced paternalism in Africa but its linguistic carbon print onAfrican national identities which acted as an umbilical corddifficult to sever and led to an era of disguised linguistic andcultural imperialism legitimated by the so-called world francophonemovement.

Initially, this movement was purely cultural with the primaryobjective to perpetuate French presence in Africa, but in the early80s, as English language, emboldened by the digital revolution movedahead to become the universal language, the French attempted tocheck its ineluctable advance by calling the world to adopt culturalspecificity “specificité culturelle” and multiculturalism. But this culturalspecificity was only good for the defense of French culture from

1 Mother tongue is the language that one learns from parents and relatives.A baby starts becoming familiar with mother tongue while in the womb. Afterbirth, when crying if a mother special language is used, the baby will stopcrying and start listening. As time progresses, a child learns mothertongue by hearing the words again and again and gradually starts usingthem. Using its mother tongue a baby expresses its feelings to those aroundit.

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English hegemony, not the other way around for other smallcountries, because French officials continued to defend bitterlytheir linguistic imperialism especially through their ownautochthonous pressure groups present in key political spheres andin trade and business.

Indeed, when the French first set foot in Africa in early 19th

century (Algeria 1830), they engaged into a massive culturalcolonisation making French the official language of education,administration and business, and discouraged the autochthonouspeople from using their national languages and scripts.

This dislike of local idioms springs from the fact that Islamicreligious lodges in North, Central and West Africa resisted thisforeign occupation and rallied large swaths of population under thebanner of Holy War jihad against the Christian occupiers. So, ittook the French quite a while to “pacify” their colonies, alienatingin the process large sections of the population that became manydecades later political and armed decolonisation movements.

In Algeria, though the religious leader Emir Abdelkader failedto oust the French, yet his bravery and memory lasted long enough oignite the national movement of FLN that led this country in 1963 toindependence from French colonialism.

Algeria, after independence, disheartened by the atrocities ofFrench occupation and then cultural colonialism made Arabic theofficial language of the nation and, somewhat attempted, to noavail, to make English the first foreign language in school. Thispolitically-motivated move had dire consequences on the country. Onthe one hand by adopting Arabic, Tamazight-speaking Algerians werediscriminated against and their culture disregarded. On the other,the arabisation of the educational system created a militant andvociferous Islamic elite Front Islamique du Salut -FIS- that vowed toreislamise the society. This political movement, first acclaimed bythe have-nots of the military regime made the FIS win theparliamentary elections of 1988. Threatened, by this energetic andflamboyant political movement, the army-controlled governmentannulled the results of the elections. This led to a bloody civilwar that claimed the lives of 900,000 people over a decade ofturmoil.

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In Morocco and Tunisia, independence did not mean the end ofFrench linguistic imperialism, but on the contrary French languageflourished even more in all spheres of life in spite of thearabisation process started in the 70s in the educational system butnever reached administration and business.

A somewhat similar situation is witnessed in Western andCentral African nations. The French left decades ago but theirlanguage and cultural influence remained vivid. In Senegal, aFrench-educated intellectual, Leopold Seda Senghor, a nationalistwith a mild stance on colonialism encouraged a return-to-the-sourcemovement glorifying African identities. This cultural movement thatcalled itself negritude was in no way a negation of the Frenchlinguistic supremacy, because right after independence most Westernand Central African nations adopted French as the official languagein education, politics and business. This is the state of affairsin Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Central Africa, Gabon,Congo, etc.

The change in attitude towards mother tongues came, not throughthe concerned countries but through an African intellectual, AhmadouTahar M’bow, who was elected Secretary General of UNESCO, andimmediately launched a series of field programmes aimed at therehabilitation of African languages in the following areas:

1 African languages and idioms as vehicles of dailycommunication between intra-national and trans-nationalcommunities, often separated by colonial artificial borders;

2 Full rehabilitation of national languages and the subsequentrecognition of oral literature and music; and

3 Use of national languages in educational curriculum andliteracy programmes

These “revolutionary measures” had as an immediate outcome:

1- Recomposition of the national identity around the locallanguages;

2- Recognition of the African identity; and

3- Review of the national curriculum

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As a matter of fact, since, the French language, though it keptits quality of official language, lost its cultural and educationalsupremacy in favour of African languages that were in the pastbelittled by the French colonial power. In fact, during thecolonial period the French encouraged the locals to write in thelanguage of Molière because it was the language of fine literatureand even set aside money to publish their work and make it knownworldwide.

Actual status of mother tongues

The rehabilitation of national languages in Africa started inearly 1980 at the university level by serious research undertaken bylinguists on different idioms spoken in a given country or area.Students motivated by the writings of their professors joined in thefray and went into the field investigating local languages in theirdifferent aspects: phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics andlanguage use.

However, the need for the recognition of national languages asfull vehicles of communications and means of durable developmentmade itself felt around 1982 when many countries launched massiveprogrammes of literacy in the countryside with the aim to helppopulation to become financially independent and take care of theirown lives rather than wait for governments, that, all in all, lackfinancial means, to come to their rescue.

As such, local associations for durable development werefounded in black African countries with the help of internationalorganizations such as UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, etc. These associationswith little means and much determination launched their firstliteracy programmes “dans la brousse” (in the bush), with in mind, thefollowing noble objectives:

1- Alphabétisation des populations rurales;

2- Aider la femme et la jeune fille à sortir de l’anonymat ;

3- Combattre certaines pratiques ancestrales néfastes: pratiquede la magie, mutilation génitale féminine, etc.;

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4- Inculquer les règles de l’hygiène et les bases de la santéreproductive et l’économie sociale ;

5- Aider la population rurale a sortir de la précarité ;

6- Permettre a la gente féminine de devenir financièrementindépendante ; and

7- Permettre aux familles pauvres de sortir du besoin.

The salient feature of this venture was that it offered acommunity-based programme which guaranteed its continuity andsuccess in the long run. The external intervention is limited totechnical help and financial support. By making such a programme, ahomespun product, the target population would identify with it andstrive to keep it going for the benefit of everyone.

These community-based literacy programmes scored quite asubstantial success in Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin andvarious other sub-Saharan countries because people realised that notonly they could become literate in their own mother tongue but theycould also learn a trade or a business and become financiallyindependent.

As matter of fact these literacy mother tongue programmesallowed many communities to become known nationally and to improvethe economic lot of their members and their social status. Thisunexpected change defeated gradually long-established and long-entertained fatalism and managed to give hope to people who believeddeep down that they are “done damned” and they are born to be poorand die poor.

These literacy programmes gave people faith in their mothertongues and contrary to the pre-conceived idea of the colonial timesthat these idioms are good for religion only, they realised, totheir astonishment, that they could be of much use in their economicpursuit.

But Mother tongues cannot only be means for economicimprovement of the local population, they can, also, be of much usein such important areas as:

1- Raising awareness as to what concerns health issues;

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2- Improving political education concerning participation inelections both as voters and candidates;

3- Highlighting the benefits of good governance; and

4-Encouraging people to undertake literacy pursuits in theirmother tongues.

In his paper entitled “Complacency and Oversight in the use ofMother Tongues in HIV/AIDS Sensitization Campaigns: the case ofRural Areas in North Eastern Nigeria,” Baba Mai Bello, argues forthe use of mother tongues in awareness-raising campaigns in ruralareas:

“By analyzing and evaluating the present state of sensitizationcampaign vis-à-vis the linguistic compositions and needs of thecommunities in this region, we argue that the campaigns againstHIV/AIDS in rural areas of this region may be fighting a loosingbattle since they do very little, owing to language limitations, toreach their target audience. With the aid of a research-administeredquestionnaire in select parts of some rural areas, we aim todemonstrate how the low awareness of HIV/AIDS as compared to urbanareas may be directly linked to the absence of mother tongues inthese campaigns, suggesting once more the importance of mothertongues in public awareness campaigns.”2

Realising the importance of mother-tongues in both humandevelopment and nation-building, UNESCO and other internationalorganizations convened an international forum in Dakar, Senegal, 26-28 April 2000, during which 150 countries pledged to provideuniversal basic education:3

…ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children indifficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities,have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education ofgood quality.

Nadine Dutcher, a researcher affiliated with the Center forApplied Linguistics, based in Washington, DC, discusses in her paper(Dutcher, 2003) discusses amply in a paper entitled: ”Promise andperils of mother tongue education” through the child’s first2 Paper read at the conference on “Globalization and Mother Tongues in Africa,” held at the Faculty of Letters and Humanities of Mohamed V University-Agdal, in Rabat on 19-20 June 2009.

3 Cf. UNESCO 2000. Para. 7.

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language or mother tongue, drawing from the speaker’s experienceswith three national programs, each in different phases:4

1- “those that are in the preparatory phase, such as the mothertongue education program in Vanuatu;

2- relatively new programs, such as the mother tongue primaryeducation program in Eritrea, and;

3- well-established programs, such as the intercultural and bilingualeducation program in Guatemala.”

The paper goes on to discusses internal support of mother tongue-first education programs—the decision to begin, language planningand development, materials preparation, teacher selection andtraining, research and evaluation—and external support such as therole of national and local government, community involvement, thedifficulties of taking a pilot program to a national scale, and therole of outside agencies:5

“We know that most children who begin their education in their mothertongue make a better start, demonstrate increased self-confidence andcontinue to perform better than those who start school in a newlanguage. The outlook for successful education is brighter when theschool builds on the foundation of the mother tongue in teaching asecond and third language. Such is the promise of mother tongueeducation. But there are perils as well. They include the possibility ofineffective teaching for a number of reasons and lack of support formother tongue education on the part of teachers, parents andgovernment.”

National curriculum: reality or fiction?

In the euphoria of national independence from colonial powers,African national governments used a populist slogan: create aneducational system to replace the colonial one. The populationsresponded favourably to this idea whereas specialists shivered atthe thought pointing out, at no avail that such a daunting taskmight take decades to achieve and enormous funds, which both weredifficult to come by.

Realising that they cannot stand by their promises, the Africangovernments proceeded to apply some cosmetic changes on the formleaving the content in its colonial shape. As such, all important4 Cf. Dutcher, 2003:1

5 Ibid.

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topics were taught in the colonial language, as in the past, onlyfew insignificant subjects were done in national languages and nonein tribal languages or local idioms. As a result, there were a lotof levels of alienation for the African learner.

In the colonial period, the African learner had to firstacquire the colonial language in the primary level of educationbefore he could have access to the other levels of education.Because of this linguistic hurdle, only the lucky few, the offspringof notables and military and political elites made it to the top, inthe long run.

So, in the first decade of independence no serious changes werebrought to the curriculum in content and philosophy, it remainedpretty much as it were during the colonial times.

However, African countries encouraged and emboldened by thestand taken by UNESCO as to what concern African native languages,under the aegis of Mokhtar M’bow, started taking a more positiveattitude towards their national languages and viewing them as toolsfor durable development rather than obstacles. This first startedin the field of literacy, after scoring several successes andgetting a positive response from the focal population, Africaneducational authorities started thinking of using mother tongues inschool curriculum with the introduction of Arabic in Chad, Wolof inSenegal, and Pular in Mali.

Both R. Wildsmith-Crismarty and M. Gordon from the Universityof Bayreuth in Germany argue quite convincingly in a paper entitled“Can the use of the Mother Tongue Aid the Development of ConceptLiteracy in Maths and Science”:6

“The use of non-indigenous languages as media of instruction in theeducational domain has been perceived as the reason for the failureof modern science and technology to take root in Africa. In SouthAfrica, low national pass rates at matriculation level bear testimonyto the failure of students to grasp scientific and mathematicalconcepts that are explained in English. If scientific terminologywas to be created in the African languages, students might be able toconstruct correct conceptions.”

6 Paper read at the conference on “Globalization and Mother Tongues in Africa,” held at the Faculty of Letters and Humanities at Mohammed V University-Agdal, in Rabat on 19-20 June 2009.

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The writers of the above-mentioned paper report on a study thatattempted to come up and conceive a multilingual resource book as asupplement for mathematics and science teachers:7

“Core concepts in mathematics, geography, physics, chemistry andbiology were identified from senior school curriculum and translatedinto two African languages, besides Afrikaans and English. Theinitiative aimed to encourage teachers to use the Resource book tointroduce the concepts in the mother tongue in order to aidunderstanding in contexts where the language of instruction isEnglish.”

The use of African mother tongues in educational curricula hasbeen for quite some time the focus of interest of the African Union(AU) with in mind the full rehabilitation of African languages ineducation, literature, media and everyday life. The AU hasentrusted the Academy of African Languages (ACALAN) with the missionto fully promote mother tongues in the African continent “MotherTongues across border.” This project focuses on the East Africanregion involving 13 countries: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda,Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, The Seychelles,Madagascar, Comoros and Mauritius.

For Naomi L. Shitomi from the School of Arts and SocialSciences of Moi University in Kenya, the above long-awaitedinitiative responds to an urgent need. She states, quiteunambiguously, that mother tongues are fragilised by globalisation:8

“With the advances of English at the international level and variousnational levels; and the official standard languages at the locallevels, e.g. Kiswahili in the Eastern Africa region; and the coloniallegacies pertaining to the language issue, mother tongues continue tobe subjected to marginalization and pressure that often relegatesthem to non-prestigious and depreciated positions. The nonarticulation of the position and role of mother tongues in variousnational constitutions and insensitive language policies; socio-economic deprivations; ethnicity and negative politics that demonizeindigenous identities and expressions and further marginalizes them.”

7 Ibid.8 “Mother Tongues across Borders: the Case of Eastern African Region,” paper read at the conference on: “Globalization and Mother Tongues in Africa, held at the Faculty of Letters and Humanities at Mohammed V University-Agdal, in Rabat on 19-20 June 2009.

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This interesting statement echoes an earlier call of emergencyto attend to African mother tongues expressed in realistic manner bythe preamble of UNESCO’s “Language Vitality and Endangermentdocument:9

“The extinction of each language results in the irrevocable loss ofunique cultural, historical, historical and, ecological knowledge.Each language is a unique expression of the human experience of theworld. Thus, the knowledge of any single language maybe the key toanswering fundamental questions of the future. Every time a languagedies, we have less evidence for understanding patterns in thestructure and function of human language, human prehistory, and themaintenance of the world’s diverse ecosystems. Above all, speakers ofthese languages may experience the loss of their language as a lossof their original ethnic and cultural identity.”

Mother tongue in education: how to go about it?

Bearing in mind that Africa is the home of thousands oflanguages, some of which are spoken, maybe, by less than one hundredpeople, the question is: which languages to use in education, andwhat criteria to use to make such a decision?

The eligible languages are undoubtedly those that are the mostused by speakers in a given country or geographical area. Thecriteria that have been used in several African countries are asfollows:

1- Most used language in a given region;

2- Most used language in a given country; and

3- Trans-national languages.

These three criteria have helped many African countriesdetermine which languages to use in education. The fact is thateven if these languages are not mother tongues, to the majority ofthe people, yet they use them as a lingua-franca in various fields ofcommunication.

Pular and Hausa are trans-national languages that are used bymillions of people in West Africa and even those for whom they are

9 Cf. UNESCO 2003: 2

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not true mother tongues, they still consider them to be theirnational idioms and do use them extensively in their daily businessmore than foreign official languages simply because they vehicle anAfrican culture close to the heart of the population and not analien way of thinking and reasoning.

The success in the use of mother tongues in sub-Saharan Africacan be attributed to diverse factors, some of which are as follows:

1- Cultural relatedness;2- Linguistic applicability;3- Social readiness;4- Popular adherence; and5- Official receptiveness,The first five years were field testing years for the whole

package and the results were truly beyond expectations in mostcountries of the region and mainly in: Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso,Chad and Senegal.

In the face of these encouraging results in Africa and also inother parts of the world, UNESCO proclaimed in 1999 theInternational mother Language Day with the intention to promotelinguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. According toUNESCO, many studies show that instruction in mother tongue is moreeffective for achievement not only for the first language but alsofor other subject areas and for second language learning.

It is a known and accepted fact that the use of mother tongueas a medium of instruction in early days of schooling contributes toimproved classroom learning and related academic achievement.

But, unfortunately despite all this, mother tongue in educationis still far from being a widely-accepted model, often due tosocial, economic, political and even technological challenges.

So, the question is: why is mother tongue an issue in educationin Africa? What does mother tongue education look like in practice?Is it truly worthwhile in terms of real costs and benefits?

Actually education in mother tongue is a world-wide issue andit exists also in developed countries in the form of the issue ofeducation in standard or nonstandard language as reported byCheshire (2005: 2342):

“It might be thought that the main issue for the classroom would behow best to teach the standard to speakers of nonstandard varieties,but the situation is complicated by social attitudes towards standardand nonstandard language. Stereotypes about “incorrect”, “careless”and “ugly” speech persist, despite of 40 years of sociolinguisticwork demonstrating that dialects and creoles are well-formed language

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systems. Ignorance and prejudice still exist among teachers – theyhave been found, for example, in recent studies carried out inBritain, Canada, New York City, the Caribbean, and Australia(Siegell1999). Furthermore speakers of the nonstandard languagesthemselves often hold the view that their language is “broken” and“poor”…”

Fortunately these “biased” ideas are not held by educationsexperts who believe like UENSCO (1968)10, whose specialists statedquite unambiguously as early as in 1951, that early education aswell as literacy are best dispensed in mother tongue, at a time whencolonial languages had the upper hand in education as well aseveryday life and vernacular languages were seen as folklore morethan anything else, as Romaine (1995: 242) has rightly pointed out,

“The traditional policy, either implicitly assumed or explicitlystated, which most nations have pursued with regard to variousminority groups, who speak a different language, has been eradicationof the native language/culture and assimilation into the majorityone.”

In Turkey where Kurdish is a minority language whose existenceis not recognized, the situation was even worse. Thus one Kurdishwoman who attended a special boarding school provided for Kurdishchildren described her heartbreaking experience vividly (Clason andBaksi 1979: 79, 86-7, translated by Skutnabb-Kangas 1984: 311-12):

“I was seven when I started the first grade in 1962. My sister, whowas a year older, started school at the same time. We didn't know aword of Turkish when we started, so we felt totally mute during thefirst few years. We were not allowed to speak Kurdish during thebreaks, either, but had to play silent games with stones and thingslike that. Anyone who spoke Kurdish was punished. The teachers hit uson the fingertips or on our heads with a ruler. It hurt terribly.That is why we were always frightened at school and didn't want togo.”

The case of Diembering School in Senegal

Linguists, education experts and teachers all agree that todaythat the way out of the educational quagmire in Africa, Asia andmany parts of the world, where the language of the colonizer becamethe official language and as a result the sole vehicle of education,is by rethinking the language or languages of instruction (Dutcher,2003:2) and reassessing totally the sacrosanct foundations of

10 Cf. UNESCO (1968) « The use of vernacular language in Education: the report of the UNESCO meeting of specialists in 1951.

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education philosophy inherited from European nations, that havenever faced the problems and perils of alienating their learners byteaching them in languages other than their mother tongues.

The benefits of learning in one's mother tongue are no longerdisputed. But is it affordable to implement mother tongue as thefirst language of learning and teaching for all learners? And if itis, where can one find the necessary expertise and ideas to make ithappen? Here below, Rudy Klaas shares the story of a mother tongueproject in the small village of Diembering, south-west Senegal,which may begin to answer these questions:11

“In 1998, school teachers in Diembering attended a mother tongueliteracy teacher training event run by SIL International. Theteachers then convinced their headteacher to try out the methodologyin their school. This first initiative was a success, and convincedparents that their children would learn better in their mothertongue. The mother tongue programme that followed sought to reducethe high failure rates in schools that resulted from students' poordevelopment of basic literacy skills in their first few years ofeducation. In 2002, the government launched a separate experimentalmulti-lingual education programme in five locations, includingDiembering.”

This revolutionary approach, for conservative educationofficials in Senegal, bore fruit immediately and shed the light andattracted attention to mother tongue education. Obviously, thechanges witnessed within this school are not accidental, in anyway,but the result of the change of the language of instruction.

Klaas reports two kinds of changes basically categorized withinthe area of students’ success in exams and students’ increasedconfidence:

1- 11 out of 18 students who were using mother tongue in alllessons passed their exams. In the two classes using French forinstruction, only two and four students respectively out of 20passed, and;

2- Mother tongue classes are more student-centred, with more useof interactive teaching methods. On-going monitoring shows thatstudents are more confident and enthusiastic.

Klaas goes on to say with much strength that detailed figures arenot available yet on how much the experimental mother tongue classescost per student. However, these classes in Diembering producedalmost four times the level of exam passes than the traditional

11 http://www.eenet.org.uk/resources/eenet_newsletter/news12/page10.php

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classes - but certainly didn't cost four times as much to run. Sothe mother tongue class approach is clearly worthwhile. The cost ofproducing traditional class books is not that different fromproducing the same book translated into a mother tongue. Translationcosts don't have to be high either; some work can be donevoluntarily, if time is taken to find motivated translators.Students from mother tongue classes often complete their learninggoals faster than those in traditional classes. This can reduceoverall education system costs, especially if it reduces the numberof students who repeat years.

And concludes quite convincingly that:12

“If a country spends less money on education that doesn't work, it coststhem more in the long term than if they spend more money on educationthat does work!”

While the Senegal attempted with much courage an important andbeneficial change of direction in language policy and its aggregate,language use in education, a heated debate is taking place to noavail both in North Africa (Chtatou, 1994: 43-62) and in SouthAfrica, two different geographical regions having different culturesand using different colonial languages as vehicles of education.

For Mamphele Ramphele, a South African academic, businesswoman andmedical doctor, the post-apartheid South African government isfailing to recognize the importance of national cultures andnational languages, one of the means to assert sovereignty as anation that is proud of its heritage. She states quite convincinglythat learning through the first language or mother tongue allowsgreatly to anchor knowledge and education in the child’s immediateenvironment made of his family, his community and society at largeas well as daily interactions and dealings. She goes on to emphasisethat pupils who are taught in the first years of their schooling intheir mother tongue and taught foreign languages as languages andnot vehicles of instruction tend to pass all their exams with flyingcolours and to go on further in their education. Other than that,pupils become alienated:13

“Our current approaches alienate children from their cultural roots andmake parents' participation in the education of their childrendifficult. How can they participate in a process in which their primarymedium of communication is rendered irrelevant? How can they help theirown children learn when the language of instruction becomes a barrier to

12 Ibid.

13 http://www.africanvoices.co.za/15

communication from the first day of school? An even more profound impactof this language policy is the undermining of the parental authority soessential to shaping the values and world-view of children at this stageof their development. Why should children respect parents who only speaka devalued language? South Africa is not alone in undermining indigenousAfrican languages. Professor Pai Obanya, a retired Nigerian educationstrategist, suggests that education in Africa tends to alienate elitesfrom their roots and undermine their capacity to be effective agents ofchange to promote sustainable development. "Education is mainly aboutacculturation, to be learned is to be cultured. Starting off anacculturation process with non-first language tends to lead to asituation in which the person could become knowledgeable but notcultured, and developing a feeling of belonging nowhere." Elites inAfrica are contributing to this trend by educating their children inprivate schools, where the teaching of indigenous African languages isminimal. Many see the inability of their children to communicate intheir mother tongue as a badge of honour.”

Mother tongue literacy In Mali

It is a known fact that all African countries are multilingualand multicultural, if not multiracial; this wide variety did notcreate disunity in the past, on the contrary it contributed tocement good relations and fruitful economic ties between differentnations and ethnic groups. However, when colonialism disembarked onthe African soil on the 18 th century, to control the rich land ofthis virgin continent, employed the old but efficient tactic of“divide to rule” and thus nations stirred by colonial agents went onthe war path and started exterminating each other and playing in thehands of the colonisers. Encouraged by this course of events, thecolonial powers, in the name of progress, imposed their language andculture and sought to downgrade or even destroy local cultures andlanguages. They downgraded these local idioms and pushed them overthe years to total extinction, imposing instead their language onthe educational system, administration and daily business.

On the education scene this had a negative impact on learners,children felt dislocated from their families and cultural backgroundat first and later totally alienated. Many of them dropped out ofschool as a result and went to swell the ranks of the alreadyexisting armies of the unemployed putting much unwanted strain onthe weak economic fabric of their poor countries. On the literacyfront, things got worse because people shied from learning inEuropean languages. Realising that such an approach would not leadto any results, whatsoever, UNESCO changed its approach and calledupon many African countries to adopt local languages. The responsewas immediate; many countries in Black Africa recognized their localidioms and transcribed this political change in their constitutions

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and went on to create ministries devoted to literacy and nationallanguages.

In Mali, the National Directorate of Literacy and Appliedlinguistics (La Direction nationale de l'alphabétisationfonctionnelle et de la linguistique appliquée (DNAFLA)) was createdin the 70s to promote national languages and use them as a tool inthe local development. Since its creation this highly activeinstitution has overseen dutifully literacy programmes nationwideand it is credited for much success in the area of informaleducation. As a result of this the Malian government has issuedOrder No. 89-0341/MEN-DNAFLA of 15 February 1989 setting forth thecomposition and functions of regional and local commissions for theelimination of illiteracy. This Order created in each regional andlocal administrative unit a commission for the elimination ofilliteracy under the authority of the Party and Administration. Theduties of the commissions are as follows:

1- To conceive, coordinate, and manage literacy activities;

2- To support and control facilities involved in literacyactivities with a view to adapting them to localcircumstances;

3- To promote and increase the use of national languages; and

4- To inform and sensitise the population and mobilise human,material, and financial resources. Further provisions of theOrder set forth the members of various commissions, amongother things.

Today Mali is cited as one of the prominent successes inliteracy in mother tongues in Africa. Indeed DNAFLA, very muchfield-oriented, started mother tongue literacy programmes in themost remote bush areas that did not even had a road let alone aschool or other basic amenities such as running water andelectricity. Initially, people were very suspicious of theprogramme, they thought maybe the government wanted to spy on themto tax them or something. Men refused to join in and preferred tosit under their village tree, known in francophone Africa by thesobriquet: arbre à palabres (chat tree), and sip tea, while womendecided to join in these functional literacy programmes. During thefirst year of the experiment women learned the three Rs and theprogramme to help them become financially independent set up ahoney- producing co-operative. At the end of the second year thewomen became income earners and saw their status move up within the

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society. Men realising the social importance of the exercise decidedto join in.

The success of this important programme had a domino effect inthe country, today DNAFLA strong with this experience is movingforward with more assurance and credibility to implant functionalliteracy nationwide and call upon international organization to joinin the effort.

The situation In the MaghrebWhile the situation of mother-tongue education is progressing

satisfactorily in sub-Saharan countries and vernacular languages areused more and more in literacy programmes and early educationcurriculum with good outcome, in North Africa the situations is veryfuzzy as what concerns national languages. The pan-Arab ideology,though outdated and vanquished, is still alive in the mind of Arableaders who see recognition of national languages as a threat to thesupremacy of Arabic language and culture and their shakydictatorships based on tribal allegiances and conservative religiouspositions.

Both in Morocco and Algeria, the governments recognised underpressure the Amazigh movement and set up for the purpose governmentbodies to manage the Amazigh population cultural needs and requestsor make believe so.

In Algeria, on The 27 th of May 1995, after months of unrest inthe streets, schools and universities of Tizi Ouzzou and variousother Algerian provinces, The State Presidency (présidence del’Etat) signed an official decree creating the High Commission forBerber Culture (Haut Commissariat de l’Amazighité(HCA)).

This institution was created hurriedly to stifle the Berbermovement known among the militants as: Tifsa Imazighen ( the Spring ofBerber Culture); However, this decision fell short of theexpectations of the Berber militants, who wanted to see theirlanguage recognised as an official language alongside Arabic sincethe constitution of 1996 did not make this wish a reality. ForAbrous, from the University of Bejaia, there was never an intentionto recognize the Berber language fully. For him creating HCA wasjust a means of triggering a carefully-planned phagocytosis.

In Morocco, the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (Institut Royalde la Culture Amazigh (IRCAM)) was created by a royal decree of kingMohammed VI in Ajdir, Khenifra, a historical site of the BerberMiddle Atlas on the 17 th of October 2001, after noticeable pressure

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of the vociferous Berber civil society. The creation of thisacademic institution and placing it directly under the authority ofthe palace had two main objectives both serving the authority of theking: checking the inexorable popularity of the Islamists and usingit as an umbrella against Berber extremism. And since, thisinstitution has served the agenda of the conservative monarchybeyond expectations.14

After the official recognition of Tamazight by the Algerianestablishment, the Berbers were faced with very hard choicesconcerning the outright implementation of this highly symbolicpolitical decision in the field, especially in such sensitive areasas: the script, the introduction of the language in schools,curriculum, training of would-be teachers of the language, etc.

The Berbers of Algeria had to struggle, from the word go, withthe difficult and highly emotional issue of the standardisation ofthe language that was hitherto oral. Finding an acceptable scriptand writing up a grammar was not an easy task, given the multitudeof dialects available and the diversity of attitudes and opinions onhow to make a national unified language out of them.

As to what concerns the script, while researchers, linguistsand experts favoured the use of phonetically-modified Latinalphabet, to give the language, according to them, an internationalstatus and make it accessible to ICT, the students in Arabic-speaking areas preferred by far Arabic script that they already knowand feel comfortable with. Indeed, in Batna 4000 students ceasedtaking their Tamazight classes dispensed in Latin alphabet, unlessit is replaced by the Arabic one, as stated by Mrs Bilek, deputy

14 In his speech, during the ceremony of the creation of the Royal instituteof the Amazigh culture in Ajdir, the king Mohammed VI set up the limits of this institution that he would oversee himself to avoid any cultural or political problems, whatsoever :

« La promotion de l’amazighe est une responsabilité nationale, car aucune culture nationale ne peut renier ses racines historiques. Elle se doit, en outre, de s’ouvrir et de récuser tout cloisonnement, afin qu’elle puisse réaliser le développement indispensable à la pérennité et au progrès de toute civilisation.

Ainsi, en s’acquittant de ses missions de sauvegarde, de promotion et de renforcement de la place de la culture amazighe dans l’espace éducatif, socioculturel et médiatique national, l’Institut Royal de la culture amazighe lui donnera une nouvelle impulsion en tant que richesse nationale et source de fierté pour tous les Marocains. »

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director in charge of Teaching and Training at HCA (haut Commissariat àl’Amazighité.)15

Teaching Tamazight was from the start riddled and handicappedby a government decision to make it optional for students and localeducation authorities. Thus, though the teaching started right afterthe official recognition of the language in 1995, yet not muchsuccess has been achieved in the field, on the contrary large numberof students dropped out of the courses for reasons still unknowntoday.

The courses after duly starting in the Wilayas of Al-Bayadh,Tipaza, Oran and Illiz, ceased unexpectedly. As for the coursescontinuing in Biskra (209 students in 2005) and in Tamnrasset (321students), they are exclusively taken by students coming from otherWilayas mainly Boumerdes,, Tizi-Ouzou, Béjaia, and Bouira. Today,onlt 11 Wilayas are still offering tuition in Tamazight languagefrom the 16 initially selected for this. So rather than getgeneralised, as it would be expected, the teaching of this languageis shrinking dangerously.16

So, tough the government has created a national centre for theteaching of Tamazight (Centre national pédagogique et linguistique pourl’enseignement de Tamazight (CNPLET)) by decree in 2003 and recognized thetongue as a national language and inscribed it in the constitutionof 2003, and likewise has taken upon itself to offer the course inthe exams of baccalaureate starting from 2008, yet the militants andBerber nationalists feel total disenchantment with the inexorableregression in interest for Tamazight among the population. Is it dueto the lack of national interest, government hidden hurdles or theoutright speedy rise of Islamism among the Algerian rank and file,who see the recognition of Tamazight and the interest shown for itas an attempt of the omnipresent enemies of Islam to sap the Arabiclanguage, the language of the holy Koran.

All that can be said is that the teaching of Tamazight inAlgeria is not a successful experience and this is corroboratedquite clearly by Youssef Merahi, the head of HCA (haut Commissariat àl’Amazighité) in the following terms:

“Treize ans après son entrée à l’école algérienne, en1995,l’enseignement public de la langue amazighe est encore « au stade del’expérimentation » 17 

15 Cf. http://www.algerie-dz.com/article7301.html

16 Ibid.

17 Cf. http://www.musikamazigh.com/actualité/140/makepdf

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On the air of the Algerian national radio, channel II (Chaine II),in 2008.

He goes on to say that though the language has been granted thestatus of “national language” in the article 3 of the Algerianconstitution, yet unfortunately its teaching cannot be obligatory inschools. According to the statistics of HCA, the number of studentsregistered in Berber language classes is 160 in Algiers and 66 000in Tizi Ouzou, which is one of the Berber Wilayas. As such, becauseof the optional status of the Berber language, 96% of learners arein Berber-speaking Wilayas of Tizi Ouzou, Bouira and Bejaia theremaining 4% are located in the rest of 7 Wilayas of the country.This disparity is also due to the fact that besides Kabyle, Chaouiand Toureg, the other Berber dialects are not taught i.e. Chleuh,Chenaoui and Mozabit.

Thus, the Secretary General of HCA has called upon thegovernment, in general, and the Ministry of National Education, inparticular, to change the official attitude towards this nationallanguage and give it a much-needed boost by undertaking teacherstraining at the university level and helping create a dailynewspaper.

In Morocco, teaching in Tamazight various subjects in school isstill a wishful thinking because even teaching the language has notbeen able to take off the ground, let alone using it as a languageof tuition alongside Arabic and French. The Moroccan educationalsystem is definitely schizophrenic in outlook and content. Moroccansare taught subjects in Classical Arabic or Standard Arabic for some,while speaking at home and in the streets various regional variantsof Moroccan Arabic, commonly known as Darija, or Tamazight. At thehigh school level and the university, they find themselves usingsome of the same subjects in French and wonder why they had to spendall these years wasting their time learning a language that cannotbe marketed. No official wants to recognize that actually Morocco isnot an Arabic-speaking member of the Arab League but rather a die-hard francophone country.18

For the two Berber researchers Hassan Banhakeia et El-HosseinFarhad, the introduction of Tamazight in the Moroccan educationalsystem is itself unheard of democratic revolution in the ultraconservative Moroccan scene:19

« Bien que la seule et véritable révolution «démocratique» à retenirpar l’histoire moderne du Maroc soit l’introduction de l’amazigh dans

18 Cf. Chtatou, 1994. Language policy in Morocco and the sticky linguistic situation of this country.

19 Cf. http://tawiza.ifrance.com/Tawiza106/banhakeia.htm

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l’institution scolaire, l’état des lieux de cette langue demeure unequestion difficile à décrire. Cette difficulté émane essentiellementde la nature du sujet où sentiments et raison fusent dans un mêmecorps, le dit et le fait prennent deux voies nettement discordantes.N’y a-t-il pas alors impossibilité réelle de réconciliation entrelangues, entre cultures, entre visions collectives au sein de lasociété? En fait, il n’y a pas d’institution meilleure ou plusefficace pour développer l’amazigh et pour lui rendre sa véritableconsidération au sein de la communauté que l’école (enseignement,apprentissage, formation, information, idéalisation, symbolisation…),et pour nous de jauger l’authenticité ou non de cette réconciliation(qui pourrait mener vers la réelle démocratie). L’on parle alorsd’ouverture sur l’amazigh. Néanmoins, une question reste posée:l’école marocaine «déjà bilingue», c’est-à-dire au fond doublementségrégationniste, peut-elle vraiment recevoir le «corps amazigh»comme étant un élément propre, légitime et vivant? »

For the two researchers the total failure of the Moroccaneducational system, after half century of independence, can beattributed undeniably to the outrageous all out arabisation of thesystem. Pupils find themselves face to face learning first alanguage they are not familiar with and later taking specialisedsubjects in this same language, they can hardly understand let alonemaster. In self-defense they reject both the language and thesubjects and end-up as hardened dropouts totally alienated fromtheir culture and even their society.

Until now, the Moroccans have miserably failed to resolve theenigma of their linguistic identity and as a result the publicschool continues to pay the price: And according to the above-mentioned researchers, the main reason for the bankruptcy of theMoroccan educational system is undoubtedly the absence of bothmother-tongue and culture from the system. This educational systemis out of contact with the reality of the learner because it ispanarab, oriental, islamist and wahhabi, in other words it is beyondthe cultural reality of the receiver and therefore he rejects itwith all his might and moves on to something else, instead20

« Il demeure évident que la principale raison de l’échec au sein del’enseignement marocain est l’absence de la langue maternelle et dela culture propre: l’amazighité. L’enfant ne se découvre pas, etl’école va le dépayser davantage. Comment se présente-t-ellel’éducation sans l’essence du citoyen placé dans l’Histoire? Sansl’attache à la terre? Sans l’attache au Temps? Sans l’attache à sesspécificités d’être humain? Le système d’enseignement qui est denature spécifiquement panarabiste, orientaliste, islamiste,wahhabite… s’en passe complètement: il est alors un programme deruptures. Aussi les politiques d’enseignements sont-elles faites par

20 Ibid.

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des ministres arabistes et / ou wahhabites qui opèrent des ruptures«historiques» au lieu de ramender les parties de ce corpsmillénaire. »

Since the creation of the IRCAM in 2001, this institution tookupon itself to introduce Tamazight in school, but like in Algeriathis proved to be a difficult task given that most of the decision-makers in the government are people who see Tamazight as a personalthreat to their political career. So after many meetings withdifferent ministries and government bodies, Tamazight was officiallyintroduced to the Moroccan educational system hurriedly by theauthorities as if to prove that it is not a viable vehicle ofeducation.

Introducing a new language within a given educational systemwithout prior:

1- Field study of the pedagogic needs;2- Training of trainers (TOT);3- Training of teachers;4- Setting up a curriculum; and5- Devising of textbooks: for both teacher and student and

field-testing them.is condemning it to programmed failure, and that is exactly whathappened. IRCAM continues to maintain verbally afloat the idea, butin principle it is dead for the reasons stated above and most of allfor the fact that learning Tamazight is optional and this means formany education officials not even bothering trying to teach it, letalone work towards making the concept work. For Ali khadaoui, aBerber studies expert, Tamazight has no constitutional status and assuch no future:21

« La langue amazighe n'a pas de statut légal inscrit dans laConstitution. Ce qui rend son enseignement public facultatif etdérisoire, comme le stipule la Charte Nationale de d’Education etde la Formation, seul document légal servant de cadre de référence àtous les acteurs de l’Education et de la Formation au Maroc.-cette langue n’est enseignée que dans une dizaine d’établissements

dans l’ensemble du pays ;Cette absence de statut officiel fixé le pouvoir politique et inscritdans la constitution rend aussi difficile la  construction descurricula valables pour cette langue pourtant parlé quotidiennementpar les trois quarts au moins de la population.- une formation au rabais de quelques jours, dispensée par despersonnes non qualifiées à des personnes qui, souvent, ne connaissentmême pas la langue qu’elles sont appelées à enseigner. »

21 http://ageddim.jeeran.com/archive/2008/2/471641.html

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Not only mother tongue is in on the limp in North Africa inschool curriculum, but there is not even a thought about introducingit in literacy programmes. Though governments have recognized theexistence of Tamazight, this recognition remains basically apolitical move not meant to be fully implemented in the field.Otherwise, before introducing Tamazight in schools, they should havetaken into consideration sub-Saharan countries experience andstarted with literacy, bearing in mind that the most disadvantagedpeople both in Morocco and Algeria are Berber women and girls, wholive in total seclusion in high and inaccessible mountains. Thisfemale illiteracy has negative effects on the education of children,family hygiene, and reproductive health, to say the least.22

These areas remain badly in need of community-based literacyprogrammes in Tamazight, the very same programmes that have hadastounding success and still do in such counties as Mali, Niger,Burkina Faso, Chad, Senegal, etc. because they have not only allowedfemales to become literate but also to start small businesses or co-operatives, and thus doing become financially-independent andcontribute to the development of their home village and area.

All in all, mother-tongue education in North Africa has longway to go before it becomes a profitable venture for the poorpopulation.

Conclusion

After decades of education in foreign languages inherited fromthe colonial period and deeply ingrained in the psyche of somepoliticians, decision makers and educators, sub-Saharan Africa iswaking up to a new reality: durable development can only be achievedgenuinely by returning to the roots and rehabilitating fully andirrevocably national languages and cultures and accepting culturaldiversity as a symbol of grandeur and not decrepitude.

With this reality in mind, many African countries have revampedtheir language and education policies and reassessed theirdevelopment priorities in the light of this change. Fullyrecognizing national languages is tantamount not only to developingeducation and giving it a new direction but also to revive the oralcultures and preserve them from extinction especially at a time of

22 Cf. UNESCO 2005

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threatening globalisation blown out of proportion by digitalrevolution.

In North Africa, a lot has still to be done in this area,starting urgently with the full recognition of national languagesand cultures and using them in schools and all walks of life.

REFERENCES

Abrous,D. 1995. Le haut commissariat à l’Amazighité, ou les meandersd’une phagocytose. Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord 34 : 583-590.

Brenzinger, M. 2005. The Endangerment of Language Diversity:Responsibilities for Speech Communities and Linguists. Al-Maghrib al-Ifrecpa: 6: 63-80.

Chtatou, M. 1994.Language Policy in Morocco. Morocco: Occasional Papers1:43-62.

Clason, E. and Baksi, M. 1979. Kurdistan Om Fortryek Och Befrielse kamp,Stockholm: Arbetarkultur.

Cheshire, J. 2005. Sociolinguistics and mother-tongue education. InAmmon, U., Dittmar, N., Mattheier, K., and Trudgill, P. (eds.):Sociolinguistics: an introductory handbook of the science of language and society. 2nd

edition. Pp. 2341-2350. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Dutcher, N. 2003. Promise and perils of mother tongue education. Ms.

---------------. 2004. Expanding Educational Opportunity in Linguistically DiverseSocieties.Revised edition. Washington, DC,: Center for AppliedLinguistics.

Romaine, S, 1995. Bilingualism (sec. ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts:Blackwell.

Siegell, J. 1999. Creoles and minority dialects in education: Anoverview. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 20 (6): 508-31.

Skutnabb-kangas, T. 1984. Bilingualism or not: The Education of Minorities.Clevdon, Avon: Multi-lingual Matters.

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UNESCO, 1968. The use of vernacular language in education: thereport of the UNESCO meeting of specialists, 1951. In: Fishman,Joshua A. (ed.): Readings in the Sociology of Language. Pp. 688-716. TheHague: Mouton de Gruyter.

UNESCO, 2000. The Dakar Framework for Action, Education for All:Meeting our CollectiveCommitmenst,adopted by the World Education Forum, Dakar, Sénégal, 26-28 April 2000.

UNESCO, 2003. Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages: LanguageVitality and Endangerment. Document submitted on UNESCO Programme“Safeguarding of Endangered Languages,” Paris, 10-12 March 2003.

UNESCO, 2005.First Language First: community based literacy programmes for minorityfor minority language contexts in Asia. Available online at:(http://www2.unescobkk.org/elib/publications/first_language/first_language.pdf)

Published in Morocco World News on 13 June 2013http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2013/06/94121/mother-tongue-in-education-the-african-experience/

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