Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | A Battle Lost in the Frontline |
Author: | Kashoki, Mubanga E. |
Year: | 1994 |
Periodical: | Africa Insight |
Volume: | 24 |
Issue: | 4 |
Pages: | 287-292 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Zambia |
Subjects: | language policy languages of instruction Politics and Government Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Education and Oral Traditions Ethnic and Race Relations |
Abstract: | During the colonial era language policy in Zambia was based on the principle that indigenous languages should assume primary importance in education. As far back as 1927, Bemba, Lozi, Nyanja and Tonga acquired a preeminent place in Zambian schools. The retreat from this frontline standpoint was sounded in 1961 when, at a Commonwealth conference held in Uganda, the view was posited that wherever English functioned as a second language, children should be exposed to it as early as possible. In many ex-British colonies, including Zambia, English teaching programmes and the number of British teachers of English increased significantly after independence. The Zambian Education Act of 1966 stipulated that English was to be the sole medium of instruction from the first years of formal education. This policy has had many negative consequences for Zambian society. One of these is that it denies the Zambian child a sociolinguistic environment in which it can grasp the fundamentals of spelling, mathematics, health, civics, science, religious education and other subjects either in his own mother tongue or in a language with a close affinity to his mother tongue. Instead, it provides a social recipe for rendering the child an illiterate frontline soldier in the cause of his own language, particularly in its written form. Ref. |