Molteno calls on Government to prioritise teaching of indigenous languages to avoid death of cultures and continued decline in scholastic performance The Molteno Institute of Language & Literacy has called on the government and civil society to join forces in an effort to stop the decline of indigenous languages. “We need to act fast to stop this alarming trend,” says Molteno CEO Masennya Dikotla. “If we fail to do so, we will soon end up with a situation where our children neither speak their mother tongues nor English fluently.”
The warning comes after the 2011 census report released last week showed a decline in several official languages: Zulu, Sepedi, Sotho, Tswana and Swati.
According to Dikotla, unless South Africa starts putting political will, money and effort into teaching our children in their home languages, the country will not only see continued failures in education, but also the death of African cultures associated with these languages.
“It is nothing short of a tragedy to see indigenous African languages disappearing,” he says. “Also, with the death of a language comes the death of a culture, which flies in the face of the principles underpinning our new democracy.”
In a bid to reverse the trend, Molteno has urged both government and civil society to become proactive in investing money into developing South Africa’s indigenous languages at both secondary and tertiary education levels.
“At the moment, there is a distinct lack of textbooks and other reading materials that can be used to teach children, as well as teachers who can teach these languages properly – something that can easily be reversed with the right kind of will and enough money,” says Dikotla.
Dikotla says this is the strategy used by proponents of Afrikaans, who have poured millions of Rands into developing the language over the years. This is a strategy that has paid off as the census has revealed that the number of Afrikaans speakers has increased by 2% and that the language is now the third most widely spoken in South Africa.
“If we cannot develop our African languages despite these compelling reasons to do so, then we are not interested in the learning of our children,” he adds, explaining that if the previous political dispensation could achieve this objective with Afrikaans by pouring money and political support into it, there is no reason why it cannot be attained with African languages.
However, South Africa has the tertiary institutions and academics available to start turning this situation around, if only the political will and financial backing existed to do so.
In addition, Dikotla points out, teaching pupils in their mother tongue is vital to ensure success in their educational careers.
“If the medium of instruction is not the language the child thinks in, particularly when parents are illiterate, learning problems accumulate and chances of dropping out increase,” he concludes.
“There is ample research showing that students are quicker to learn to read and acquire other academic skills when first taught in their mother tongue – which must at all costs be preserved.”