International Mother Language Day

activities than those who follow the old way of learning. They become more patriotic too. The rate of success at exams is higher, the school drop-out rate is lower, absentee rate is lower, and the number of repeaters is lower. Moreover, the performance of these students’ in the official language surpasses that of the ones who didn’t have mother tongue education.

Access to education in our mother tongue and in other languages

What does it mean? It means that we educate our children in their home language for (at least) the first eight years of their schooling. From nursery to the end of primary school (Grade 6), and even later, children will learn to read and write in their native language. In addition, they will learn their math, science, social studies and the rest of their subjects in this same native language.

During the first two years, classroom activities will take place in the child’s home language only. From year three, he or she will begin to learn to read and write in the other languages. In Guyana, this other language would be English (and any other languages). Gradually, the teacher will introduce some of the other subject content in this ‘new’ language.

The teacher will use the child’s knowledge of the home language to teach this second language. Children will not be punished or shamed for using their first language. Little Osafa or Omawattie can say “Miss mi waan susu” without having to wet himself or herself because the teacher said, “When you can tell me what you want in proper English, then you can go.”

Don’t start making plans to move your child out of Guyana just yet. If such a policy were to come into effect, one would expect it to be optional. Allowing access to Mother-Tongue-Based Multilingual Education does not mean we exchange one dictatorship for another. However, in places where such an option was offered, those who chose to stay with the status quo soon changed their minds and opted to be included once they saw the results.

The case for Mother-tongue-based Multilingual Education

Learning doesn’t start at school. At home, children learn by doing, by questioning, by talking to themselves and to others (including talking to toys and any other objects.) They learn by observing, exploring, drawing conclusions about how things work and testing their conclusions. They adjust their conclusions when they are ready to do so. This is child-centred learning.

The one-year old who rips up the pages of your newspaper before you got a chance to read it is not doing so because he/she is bad. He/she is discovering properties of different materials and objects. The child who drops all your precious objects on the floor is discovering properties of gravity among other things.

Mother tongue learning works the same way. Here too the child is observing, exploring, creating theories, testing them and changing them as necessary. In spite of what we think, adults don’t teach the child his/her first language.

So, learning begins before the child comes to school. This learning has been taking place in the child’s home language and it takes place while the child interacts with the persons at home.

If the school allows mother tongue education, the child will continue to participate in learning activities, interacting with the teacher and students as done at home. By the time (s)he is introduced to literacy in the second language, the child already understands the principles of reading and writing; he just needs to learn the new system. When (s)he has to learn to do math, science, and the other subjects in the new language, this too is easier and quicker. The child already knows the concepts. All (s)he has to do is learn the relevant vocabulary and grammar for expressing the content. (S)he doesn’t have to face the double challenge of learning the concepts as well as the new terminology all at the same time

Mother-tongue-based Multilingual Education is meant to include the excluded. Right now Creole-speaking Guyanese and speakers of indigenous languages are excluded from the education we have to offer. We are offering it in a language that handicaps them. If learners don’t understand, how can they learn? Let’s level the playing field.

The significance of Feb 21

UNESCO celebrates International Mother Language Day (or International Mother Tongue Day). This year the focus is on the importance of the native languages of all human beings for two main reasons. First, there is the need to recognise that education in one’s home language is best. Secondly, there is the need to recognise the value of every culture and the language that transmits that culture. They are part of the legacy of humanity.

On Feb 21, 1952, students from the University of Dhaka were demonstrating for the recognition of Bengali as one of the two national languages of East Pakistan. They were shot and killed by the police. In 1998, a Bengali living in Canada petitioned the Director General of the UN asking him to take steps to save the world’s languages from extinction. He proposed that Feb 21 be declared International Mother Language Day. This came into effect in 1999.

The right to read and write in one’s mother tongue is now recognised to be part of our linguistic human rights.