‘NASALISING’ DOES NOT MEAN A BETTER EDUCATION

EDUCATION and access to education is a complex phenomenon in South Africa and this is informed by our past history of colonialism and apartheid.

The 2015-2016 university #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall protests and numerous protests in our schools are the manifestation of obstinate social engineering of our past that sought to systematise the marginalisation of black people from getting an emancipatory education.

The colonial government and apartheid government committed themselves in effect to black epistemicide to create docile black subjects who were going to participate in their oppression.

In 1976 black students in Soweto utterly rejected apartheid epistemicide endeavours and took it to the streets. We are all aware of the Soweto Student uprising massacre.

Nevertheless, post-apartheid, black people – concerning education and many other services – have been left yearning for more than they could get from the post-apartheid government.

The post-apartheid South African government had been largely concerned with increasing the number of black people with formal education in a paradox and mutatis mutandis manner.

For instance, decreasing the basic education pass mark to 30% yet claiming it has the intention of increasing the numbers and percentages of black people with university degrees.

What seems to matter the most to the South African government as far as education is concerned is quantity in lieu of quality of education.

Post-apartheid government’s education policy is still buttressed in the Anglo-normativity paradox discourse that dispels multilingualism as a lingua franca.

English remains the dominant language in our schools’ classrooms although this dominance is expressed in a paradoxical manner. English dominance in our classrooms does not transcend to discourse dominance but is only limited on paper.

For instance, all the subjects taught in black schools are taught in English with the exception of the home language. Inasmuch as all the subjects being taught in English, it is common to find learners who struggle to write, enunciate and discourse in English.

Our language policy absolutely fails to accommodate learners with minimum exposure to the English language. Professor Jim Cummins, a linguist professor and one of the world’s leading authorities on bilingual education and secondlanguage acquisition, postulated that it takes 4 years for a learner to gain competence to communicate in a new learned language and 7 years to learn in the academic language.

However, in our context, South Africa, learners are taught in their home languages from Grade 1 until Grade 3. It is only Grade 4 that they are taught in English although the 1997 Language Policy in Education promotes bilingual teaching, however, the additional language, English, is given prominence over African languages.

We find that to be bizarre and problematic because the sudden switch to English in Grade 4 as the medium of instruction to learners who have been taught in their African languages from the foundation phase, means they lack adequate and sufficient learning repertoires in comprehending English. Thus in South Africa we have learners in Grade 4 who are reading without understanding.

Concomitantly, parents who can afford to and in the name of salvaging their children from poor education received in black schools take their children to former exclusively white schools to get a “better education”.

However, we all know that the children taken by their parents to the former exclusively white schools do not get a “better education”. Instead, they more often experience racial slurs unleashed towards them.

Once these children have mastered the art of “nasalising” and making it to the nose brigade circles, it is then assumed they have received a “better education”.