Unite in language
YOUR article (June 19) about racially and linguistically segregating children as a school in Gauteng has important educational implications. One of the ongoing debates is the extent of desire or possibility to educate children in their home languages.
On the face of it, it makes perfect sense that a child will learn quicker and better if they are taught in their home language – and indeed there are studies proving that this is so.
The practical problem is that in South Africa it is generally accepted – most strongly by the parents themselves – that children need to become fluent in English. Being able to speak only an African language makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to go to college or university, to get a professional qualification, or to get a job.
The answer given by institutions such as Praesa at UCT, which promote home-language education, is that the children must be “switched” from home language into English after several years at school. But teachers are mostly not able to give sufficiently good instruction in English. So all that happens is that the educational hurdle of learning English is delayed from Grade R to Grade 5.
I was instrumental in building two model primary schools in very poor areas (Imizamo Yethu in Hout Bay and Vrygrond near Lavender Hill). In both, the populations were mixed. In Vrygrond, 40 percent of the children spoke Afrikaans and 40 percent Xhosa (20 percent from elsewhere in Africa).
To have instituted home-language education would have meant the segregation of classes into “coloured” and “Xhosa”. Language would have become a tool of racial segregation, which is apparently what is happening in the Roodeplaat School.
In the event we decided that our policy would be to teach the children English as quickly as possible. And one of the moments of joy I shall forever remember was walking through the playgrounds three months after the school opened, to hear black and coloured kids communicating in English. Something that never happened in Vrygrond before then. Given the opportunity, children will absorb language almost effortlessly.
So, the distasteful linguistic apartheid revealed in the Gauteng school needs to be taken into account by those who propose home-language education. Teaching children a common language early on, especially in schools with different language groups, uses language as an instrument of unification, instead of separation. Jonathan Schrire