Tanzanian Association Oslo

PUBLIC LECTURE @

TOPIC: EDUCATION FOR ALL –

IN WHOSE LANGUAGE?

Presenter: Prof. Emeritus Dr. Birgit Brock-Utne,

University of Oslo, Norway (UiO)

Venue : Nkrumah Campus Hall

Tuesday 1st of December, 2009

Time : 10:00 – 11.00 EAT

All developed countries in the world use children’s mother tongue or at least a language which is very familiar to them as the language of instruction. The Finns use Finnish, the Greeks use Greek, the British use English, Norwegians use Norwegian, the Icelanders use Icelandish, the Japanese Japanese, the Koreans Korean. Only one continent uses languages which teachers and students do not command well, languages which in reality are foreign languages. That continent is Africa.

The current strengthening of English as language of instruction in Tanzania is one way of making schooling harder for the masses of Africans and undermining democracy since only a tiny portion of pupils, those whose parents have books and resources, can pay private tutoring and have time and knowledge enough to follow up their children’s homework, will do well in the system. It is a system well designed for what Prof. Dr. Birgit Brock-Utne has elsewhere called “the stupidification” of the African population.

In her talk she will mention results from the LOITASA (Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa) project. She mentions a study of science concepts carried out as part of the LOITASA project in a black township near Cape Town. According to her the study showed clearly how much better children understood the concepts when they were taught in isiXhosa than when they were taught in English.

A similar study from Tanzania found that the mean was higher and the spread of scores was much lower when the class was taught in Kiswahili than when it was taught in English. On this background the new policy (look at the story below from Daily News) from Zanzibar seems to contradict all we know about learning science and maths.

In the LOITASA project they have seen that there are several challenges they have to deal with if they want to make language policy research relevant for those most greatly affected by the policy.

There are misconceptions in this field which are hard to deal with. Often western paradigms are used when researching language policy in Africa. These paradigms, which do not fit the African situation, are used by donor agencies and researchers trained in the west as well.

Another challenge to overcome is the common misconception that the best way to learn a foreign language is to have it as a language of instruction. Prof. Dr. Birgit Brock-Utne will deal with these two challenges separately.

Issued by the Public Relations Office

State University of Zanzibar