language policy

INTRODUCTION.

Languagepolicyiswhatagovernmentdoeseitherofficiallythroughlegislation,courtdecisionsorpolicytodeterminehowlanguagesareused,cultivatelanguageskillsneededtomeetnationalprioritiesortoestablishtherightsofindividualsorgroupstouseandmaintainlanguages.ThescopeoflanguagepolicyvariesinpracticefromStatetoState.Thismaybeexplainedbythefactthatlanguagepolicyisoftenbasedoncontingenthistoricalreasons.Likewise,Statesalsodifferastothedegreeofexplicitnesswithwhichtheyimplementagivenlanguagepolicy.TheFrenchToubonlawisagoodexampleofexplicitlanguagepolicy.

Tanzania, like many African countries, boasts a wealth of indigenous languages. At last count, over 127 languages were spoken in this country of 37 million on the east coast of Africa (Gordon 2005). Tanzania differs from some of its neighbors in that a lingua franca, Swahili, is spoken as a second language by a vast majority of the population and is a straightforward choice for a national language. Swahili is a Bantu language in structure and vocabulary, making it closely related to many of the country's local languages, but it also draws a great deal of its vocabulary from Arabic due to the influences of coastal trade. Swahili is the mother tongue of the Swahili people living along the coast and in Zanzibar, as well as of the younger generations of city dwellers. An estimated 30 million rural Tanzanians are second-language speakers, using their local language at home but Swahili for cross-tribal communication (Gordon 2005). In 2004 the National Kiswahili Council estimated that 99 percent of all Tanzanians spoke Swahili as at least a second language (Brock-Utne 2005)

A common educational dilemma in multilingual African countries is what to choose as the language of instruction. In the absence of an ethnically neutral lingua franca, any choice will be seen to favor certain ethno-linguistic groups at the expense of all others. According to Alidou (2004), this was not a problem prior to colonization, when each community used its own language to educate its children. Education across ethno-linguistic groups was not necessary until the arrival of colonialism and Western education, when formal schools were introduced and children who spoke different languages were often placed in the same classroom. The problem of multilingualism in the classroom had a simple solution for most colonizers: simply teach in the colonial language.

 In Tanzania  , however, the choice of a colonial language was less obvious. Swahili, widely spoken by the arrival of the colonizers, could be used as easily as the colonial language to bridge linguistic gaps in the classroom. Today, Tanzania and Ethiopia are the only countries on the continent to use national languages rather than colonial ones throughout the primary school system (Alidou 2004). Nonetheless, Tanzania has not escaped the medium-of-instruction problems plaguing so many other African countries. Although Swahili is used in primary education, English is the medium of instruction at the secondary and post-secondary levels. There is an ongoing debate over whether this is the optimal amount of English in Tanzanian schools, with compelling arguments for both English and Swahili as primary media of instruction; this controversy will be addressed in the following sections

Swahili had its first taste of official status during the German colonial rule beginning in the late seventeenth century, when it was designated for nationwide use in education and colonial administration. After some controversy over whether German or Swahili should be used as the medium of instruction in schools, Swahili was eventually chosen, although the colonial government’s motivation for this decision has been called into question. Rather than desiring Tanzanians to learn in a language they spoke because it would advance their education, did the administration perhaps hope to prevent Tanzanians from learning German and thereby acquiring a sense of equality with their colonizers? (Roy-Campbell 2001: 41). The most straightforward explanation for their decision is that since the goal of the government schools was to prepare Tanzanians for employment in the colonial bureaucracy, using the convenient lingua franca already spoken by nearly all potential employees both in schools and in colonial administration was most practical. This promotion of Swahili as a language of education and administration during German colonial rule was instrumental in the language’s spread as a lingua franca in Tanzania (Roy-Campbell 2001: 42).

In 1954 the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), the political party that fought for independence from British rule, used Swahili as a tool for uniting the different ethnic groups it sought to represent (Rubagumya 1990). Tanganyika gained independence in 1961, with Julius Nyerere, a former secondary-school teacher and founder of TANU, as its first leader. His vision was of a country united under ujamaa, or “familyhood,” a political philosophy of socialism and self-reliance. Nyerere adopted an aggressive nation-building campaign that included promoting Swahili as the language of public life and transforming the educational curriculum of government schools to focus on the Tanzanian national experience (Miguel 2001). In a book entitled “Education for Self-Reliance,” Nyerere criticized the Western view of education prevailing in Tanzania following independence:

A 1978 study commissioned by the National Kiswahili Council (Mlama and Matteru) heightened concerns about existing policies and expectations of change (Lwaitama and Rugemalira 1990). In February of 1982 the Presidential Commission on Education, appointed by Nyerere, recommended that a change from English to Swahili in secondary classrooms be effected starting in 1985 (Lwaitama and Rugemalira 1990). Not long after these recommendations were made, policymakers were already beginning to change their minds.

The Ministry of Education released an official, if vague, statement in 1984: “Both languages, English and Kiswahili, will be used as media of instruction. English will be improved at all levels of education” (Wizara ya Elimu 1984: 19, cited in Lwaitama and Rugelamira 1990: 37). Later that year, Julius Nyerere announced in a speech that English was needed in secondary schools in order to encourage Tanzanians to learn and value the language (Lwaitama and Rugelamira 1990).

It is unclear what motivated this political change of heart. Some speculated that the government was wary of switching to Swahili because it might increase the demand for secondary education, which the government would not have been able to accommodate (Lwaitama and Rugelamira 1990). Given the political unrest this imbalance would cause, it is plausible that policymakers in the 1980s were motivated by such fears. However, the hesitation to adopt Swahili as a language of instruction at higher levels may also have been based on the prohibitively high cost of developing educational materials in the language. This has been a major factor in the maintenance of colonial languages in the educational systems of many other African countries, most of which are very poor (Yahya-Othman 1990). Today, the structure of official language use in Tanzanian education is much as it was following independence: Swahili is the language of instruction in primary schools, English in secondary schools

It has been well documented that students in secondary schools are not prepared for the use of English as a medium of instruction. Teachers and students alike struggle to express themselves clearly in a language they have not mastered. Swahili often becomes the de facto language of instruction as students and teachers switch to the more familiar language for clarification and discussion (Roy-Campbell et al 1997).

 A 1978 study by Mlama and Matteru found that the standards of English education are falling and that students perform much better under the medium of Swahili. An essay exam given through this study yielded thoughtful and concise responses when the students were asked to use Swahili, but disjointed and nearly unintelligible responses to the same questions by the same students when asked to use English (Roy-Campbell 1997). The Criper and Dodd Report made a similarly bleak observation in 1984

In addition, this study estimated that up to 75 percent of teaching, at least at the early stages of secondary education, was being done in Swahili rather than English (Rugemalira et al 1990). Often students and teachers employ code switching, the practice of alternatingbetween two languages to ease communication, rather than relying entirely on Swahili. Cleghorn and Rollnick (2002) argue that code switching in the classroom may be a fruitful path towards more effective bilingual education. They suggest that small interjections in the local language such as “isn’t that so?” or “you know?” serve to recapture the attention of learners, even if the phrases themselves carry no content. In addition, the local language can be used to clarify details of the lesson that were not understood when explained in English. However, the authors mention that the positive effects of code switching in African classrooms are often limited by the belief held by teachers and students that code switching is unacceptable and by the presence in some classrooms of inspectors intent on upholding English-only policies.

Many students and teachers in secondary schools have found ways of getting around the English language barrier in the classroom, but assignments and tests are still written in English, handicapping students with low proficiency. In particular, national exit exams from secondary school are conducted in English, not Swahili. This poses serious problems for many students—both students who have failed to pick up English despite the best efforts of their teachers and students who have been allowed to conduct much of their education in Swahili by more permissive instructors, neglecting their English instruction. An inadequate command of English, regardless of the level of understanding of the subject matter, could cause a student to fail her national exams and prevent her from graduating and moving on to university. Not surprisingly, students do perform very poorly on the national exams and rates of failure are high: Nearly 50 percent of Form IV leavers failed their national exams in English in 1986 (Yahya-Othman 1990).

The current educational language policy can be criticized for economic reasons as well. Competence in English can be regarded as a form of human capital  useful to them in seeking employment, where the return on investment in English is a wage premium (or, perhaps, access to higher-paying job categories that require knowledge of English.) Immigrants from Kenya, Uganda and Zambia who were exposed to English at a younger age are often more qualified to take high-paying jobs in Tanzania because of their English skills, thereby displacing Tanzanians who would be qualified if only they spoke better English. There seems to be a clear pattern of higher-prestige jobs tending to employ English speakers, although we cannot be sure of the direction of causation. According to a sociolinguistic study by Polomé (1980), shopkeepers, clerks, professionals, managers/administrators and teachers in Tanzania all tend to be trilingual in the vernacular, Swahili and English. Unskilled laborers and farmers, on the other hand, tend to speak their own vernacular and some Swahili, but no English (Polomé 1980: 111).

On the other hand, if English is introduced to students earlier and emphasized more in primary school, students may be better prepared to learn entirely in English when they reach secondary school. A stronger foundation in English would allow students both a heightened understanding of subject matter that is presented in English and the tools necessary for completing the national exams. They would also arguably enjoy broadened labor-market opportunities and higher wages given their skills in English. Finally, the labormarket benefits of English skills would ideally accrue in equal amounts to anyone at a given level of education, and would not depend on whether they had attended government or private schools. There would be great social benefits to having the human capital of English distributed more equitably across socioeconomic classes

CONCLUSION

There are two important conclusions to be drawn from this discussion. First, speaking English is likely to help some individuals raise their standard of living, and having many English speakers in Tanzania may lead to economic growth. Second, if the quality of education is higher when conducted in Swahili, children should be learning in Swahili rather than English. Ultimately, the quality of education is the biggest priority of this policy analysis; better education brings all the human capital benefits of knowing English, and more. Although English-language education would probably be good for the country, there are other priorities besides having an economy filled with English speakers. Most important among these in the realm of education is increasing secondary enrollment; current levels are unacceptably low, well below the African average. Language policy is crucial to consider at the moment because it has such a detrimental effect on education, and education is so instrumental in development. Beyond correcting the failures of language policy in education, the government’s priorities should lie elsewhere.

REFERENCES

Alidou, H.  (2004). “Medium of Instruction in Post-Colonial Africa.” Medium of Instruction           Policies. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,

Batibo, H. M (1990). “English language teaching and learning in Tanzanian primary schools.”     Language in Education in Africa: A Tanzanian Perspective. Ed. C. M. Rubagumya.        Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters,.

Brock-Utne, Birgit (2005). “The Continued Battle over KiSwahili as the Language of         Instruction in   Tanzania.” Languages of Instruction for African Emancipation. Dar es   Salaam: Mkuti Na       Nyota,

Gordon J, ed. (2005). Summer Institute of Languages. Ethnologue.

Lwaitama, A. F. and Rugemalira, J. M (1990). “The English language support project in   Tanzania.”      Language in Education in Africa: A Tanzanian Perspective. Ed. C. M.             Rubagumya.    Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters,.

 Mazrui, Alamin. “The World Bank, the language question and the future of African education”     Race    and Class 38.3 (1997): 35-48.

 Mwansoko, H. J. M (1990). “Swahili terminological modernization in the light of the present         language policy of Tanzania.” Language in Education in Africa: A Tanzanian Perspective. Ed.            C. M. Rubagumya. Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters,.

Roy-Campbell, Zaline M. and Martha A. S. Qorro (1997). Language Crisis in Tanzania: The        Myth of             English Versus Education. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki Na Nyota,

Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (2001).

Yahya-Othman, S, (1990). “When international languages clash: The possible detrimental             effects on             development of the conflict between English and Kiswahili in            Tanzania.” Language in         Education in Africa: A Tanzanian Perspective. Ed. C. M.           Rubagumya. Philadelphia:      Multilingual Matters