It warms my heart that today, 8th September 2016,
Malawi is celebrating the International Literacy Day on its designated day.
More often than not, we are jolted into action after seeing what other parts of
the world are doing on the day, and then we go “Ah! So today is International
Literacy Day? Let us choose a day to commemorate it.” So we end up doing the
commemoration in the latter part of the month, or even in October.
This year, a press release was floated in the papers a week
or so ahead of the day. Two ministers, for Education, Science and Technology
(Dr. Emmanuel Fabiano), and Gender (Dr. Jean Kalilani) are expected to be at
Champiti Primary School in Ntcheu district to commemorate the day.
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| Photo credit: Steve Sharra |
This brings back memories of how we commemorated the day in
2010. A few weeks to the day, I went around knocking on people’s office doors at
Capital Hill asking if there were any events planned to commemorate the day. I went
to the Ministry of Education where the then acting Secretary for Education,
Science and Technology was not in office that day. His secretary referred me to
one of the directors. The director told me that the Ministry of Gender had
traditionally commemorated the day, so they might be better placed to know if
there were any events being planned.
I went to the Ministry of Gender, met a director, and
learned that there was no event being planned. Shouldn’t this be a Ministry of
Education event, actually? Asked the director, rhetorically. As I wrote in a blogpost
in 2010, it dawned on me that “literacy” in Malawi’s seat of government, at
least as of 2010, was understood as “adult literacy.”
It wasn’t until I met the National Librarian, Mr Grey Nyali,
that we managed to put together an event. We went to Zodiak Broadcasting
Station, where Winston Mwale, a former teacher turned journalist, jumped at the
idea. We pre-recorded a one-hour panel discussion, which aired on ZBS on 8th
September 2010.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the International Literacy Day. The
theme this year is “Reading the Past, Writing the Future,” according to UNESCO.
As is the case every year, the UNESCO International Literacy Prizes are being
awarded. They are the King Sejong Literacy Prize and the UNESCO Confucius Prize
for Literacy.
The King Sejong Literacy Prize is being awarded to
organisations in Vietnam and Thailand. In Vietnam the Center for Knowledge
Assistance and Community Development is working to bring books to rural
communities. In Thailand the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of
Asia, at Mahidol University, has a programme that promotes multilingual
education.
The Confucius Prize is being awarded to three winners in
South Africa, Senegal and India. They are the South African Department of Basic
Education, for a mass literacy campaign; the Directorate of Literacy and
National Languages in Senegal; and the Jan Shikshan Sansthan organisation, in
Kerala, India.
All the five winners appear to have a common cause:
promoting literacy amongst marginalised groups. Although the winning
organisations seem to be going about pursuing this common interest in various
ways, at the core of their endeavours is the role of language in promoting literacy.
Two problems continue to pose a remarkable obstacle in the way we think about
literacy.
The first problem lies in the way literacy is understood in
most societies. Because we see the school as the primary agency for imparting
literacy skills, we think of literacy in academic terms only. Reading and
writing tend to be the standard markers of literacy. We do not think of
literacy in cultural and organic terms, referred to as “vernacular literacies”
by the literacy researcher David Barton.
Barton (2007) argues that we enact literacy activities in
our everyday lives, many of them hidden from public view, and occurring outside
reading and writing. Examples include how we relate with others, earn
livelihoods, feed ourselves and our families, and acquire new knowledge, among
others. When these activities do not involve overt reading and writing
practices, we do not think of them as literacy events.
The second problem is the tyrannical dualism that resides in
officialdom and defines language as either official or national. This is
particularly the case in countries that were formerly colonised. The ruling
elites of these countries think of language in either-or terms, and impose
English, or whichever colonial language the country inherited, as the official
language. The idea that an indigenous language can be given the same status as
the colonial language and co-exist with it is anathema to them.
There has been a plethora of research and advocacy, from
universities and international cultural organisations such as UNESCO, arguing
for the importance of linguistic diversity in national language policies. Much of it falls on barren ground. The elites have dug in, and have bought into
the linguistic monoculture sold by English-only imperialism.
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| Everyday litreacies. Photo credit: Steve Sharra |
In most formerly colonised countries, indigenous languages
are not taught in the public school systems. When they are, they are used for
the first four years of primary schooling, after which English takes over. In the
case of Malawi, the Education Act of 2013 goes as far as prohibiting indigenous
languages from the school system, declaring English as the language of
instruction from Standard One.
But English imperialism is global. In a 2010
article, Sonia Nieto, now professor emerita of Language, Literacy and
Culture at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, wrote about the struggle
for linguistic diversity in American schools. She wrote about how as a child,
she was told not to speak Spanish on school premises because it was “rude.” This
was one example, of many, which demonstrated to her the “power of language to
either affirm or disaffirm one’s identity.” Nieto argued that for 21st
century education, “knowing more than one language is an asset rather than a
disability, particularly in these times of globalisation and increased
immigration.”
In a 6
September article on The Conversation, Carolyn McKinney and Xolisa Guzula,
a University of Cape Town professor and PhD candidate respectively, write about
how South African schools “use language as a way to exclude children.” Written
in the wake of revelations about South African schools which discipline
students for speaking indigenous languages, they point out that recent research
in language, bilingualism and bilingual education shows that there are academic
benefits to students being allowed to use more than one language in the
classroom.
What I find surprising is that this comes as a surprise, at
least in South Africa. In Malawi and in much of the Southern African region,
indigenous languages are seen, by the elites, as a burden that needs to be rid of.
Almost all private schools in Malawi prohibit students from speaking Malawian
languages on school premises. The idea behind the trend is that students will
improve their spoken English if they are prevented from speaking indigenous
languages.
The imperative for students to improve English proficiency
is as undeniable as it is well meaning. English opens doors to advanced
knowledge and to careers. The problem arises when this belief is taken to
extremes and becomes what Nieto calls an “ideology of exclusion and dominance”
that views diversity as a negative rather than a positive. McKinney and Guzula
say this ideology sees “language as a problem” instead of a
resource. It is an ideology borne of what they term “Anglonormativity”, the
perception that if one is not proficient in English, one is deficient.
When I was in secondary school, at Nankhunda Seminary and later at Police Secondary School, my best friend and I made an
agreement that we would speak to each other only in English. A few other
friends joined us. It helped us enormously, and enabled us to become proficient
in English. It was an arrangement we made willingly without coercion from
school authorities. As a result, we became creative in how we went about
improving our English. We competed in who would read the most novels in one
week, and who would write the most fiction.
The problem with schools prohibiting the use of indigenous
languages and forcing students to speak English only is that it reinforces
everything that is negative and hated about schooling. It curtails students’ motivation
to learn, and stifles their creativity. It prevents students from developing responsibility
for their own learning, the most important cognitive skill schools should
teach.
English becomes associated with fear and a deep sense of
inferiority. It becomes one of the reasons many students fail in school and in
life. It is important that we encourage students to become proficient in
English, but fear and dread and are not the best approaches to achieve this.
Malawi’s abysmal educational attainment statistics are a
consequence of these beliefs and vices, carried on into adulthood and
perpetuating themselves in our society. Every year close to one million
Malawian children enter school. After eight years, only 250,000 survive to sit
the primary school leaving certificate. After four years, 150,000 of them
survive to sit the secondary school leaving certificate. Of these, no more than
50,000 make it into tertiary education.
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| Photo credit: Steve Sharra |
The verdict on these hundreds of thousands of students that do
not make it to the top is that they are failures, a label that becomes
self-fulfilling, and life-long. Yet many of them are very bright people
with diverse gifts that are neither recognised nor rewarded. As Julius Nyerere
put it in 1967, Africans now get the “worst of both systems.” The modern
education system fails too many people, who have nothing to fall back on as the
indigenous knowledge systems that sustained life before Westernisation have
also been destroyed by colonialism.
The challenge of language and literacy educators today is to
support teachers, schools, students and communities with intellectual contexts
in which multilingualism is seen as practical and beneficial. Such contexts
range from personal anecdotes and experiences to research practices and policy
imperatives in local and global contexts.
For us in Africa and in formerly colonised parts of the
world, Ngugi wa Thiongó (2005) has laid this out as “the challenge of our
history.” That challenge is for African intellectuals to “do for their
languages and cultures what all other intellectuals in history have done for
theirs.” It is fitting that in commemorating this year’s International Literacy
Day, UNESCO is calling for “Reading the Past, Writing the Future.”
